
Class. 
Book 



Fio(o 



lL&£- 



CopyrightN . 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS FROM 
THE ST. LAWRENCE TO VIRGINIA 

INCLUDING THE STATES OF 

WEST VIRGINIA 

PENNSYLVANIA 

NEW JERSEY 

DELAWARE 

MARYLAND 

NEW YORK 

VIRGINIA 

AND THE 

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA 




An old Dutch porch in New Jersey 



HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 

FROM THE 

ST. LAWRENCE TO VIRGINIA 



I — - 






WRITTEN AND 
ILLUSTRATED BY 

CLIFTON JOHNSON 



\i 




Publish^ by THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

New York Mcmxiii 



LONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED 



FiOt, 



Copyright, 191 J, 

by the Macmillan Company. 

Set up and Electrotyped. 
Published September, 1913. 



AMERICAN 
HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 



FROM THE ST. LAWRENCE 
TO VIRGINIA 



Electrotyped 

and 

Printed 

by the 

F. A. Bassette Company 

Springfield, Mass. 



©CU854412 






(73 

* 

9 



I. 
II. 

III. 

IV. 

V. 

VI. 

VII. 

VIII. 

IX. 

X. 

XL 

XII. 

XIII. 

XIV. 

XV. 



Contents 

The Adirondack Winter 

Midsummer in the Catskills 

The Heart of the Hudson Highlands 

The Land of Oil 

An Industrial Metropolis 

A Vale of Anthracite . 

A Famous Battlefield . 

The Water Gap and Beyond 

Along Shore in Jersey 

A Glimpse of Delaware 

Roundabout the Nation's Capital 

Maryland Days .... 

Beside the Rappahannock 

June in the Shenandoah Valley 

West Virginia Rambles 



Page 

I 

26 

47 

8i 

107 

131 

151 
170 

203 

222 

242 

254 
282 

303 
320 



Illustrations 



An Old Dutch Porch in New Jersey . 

Among the Mountains 

Getting a Pail of Water . 

A Load of Logs on Lake Placid 

A Summer Afternoon 

Coming from the Hayfield 

Ploughing one of the Stony Fields 

Going A-Milking .... 

Skinning the Coon .... 

Ready to Start after Partridges 

An Old-time Well That is Still Pumped 

Oil Creek at Petroleum Center 

Going to Town .... 

Braddock's Battlefield Viewed from Across 

gahela ..... 
A Toll Bridge .... 

The Old Church at Economy . 
A Coal Village with a Mountainous Culm 

Background .... 
A Breaker ..... 
A Miner and an Above-ground Friend 
An Old Smokehouse 
The Devil's Den .... 
The Haymaker .... 



Heaj 



Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

6 

IO 

19 
26 

35 
40 

53 
58 
67 
86 
90 
99 

107 
114 
122 

131 

138 

H7 
154 
163 

168 



the Monon 



in the 



x Illustrations 










FACING PAGE 


A Boatman at the Gap . 181 


The Old Wellsweep 










1 86 


Housework 










195 


A Back Porch 










203 


Reflections 










210 


The Scarecrow 










218 


The Wreck 










227 


Setting the Net 










230 


The Pump at the Back Door 










235 


The Capitol . 










240 


At the Alexandria Waterside 










247 


At the Fishing-place 










251 


In the Garden 










258 


Coming from the Spring . 










266 


The Wash-house 










275 


Old Homes in Fredericksburg 










282 


A Farm Gate 










291 


Making a Hoe Handle 










294 


The Wilderness Church 










298 


The Shenandoah River . 










307 


A Ferry 










3" 


The Great Chimney 










315 


A Log House on the Mountain 








322 


Worm Fences 








33i 


Returning from the Post Office 










338 



Introductory Note 

All the volumes in this series are chiefly concerned 
with country life, especially that which is typical and 
picturesque. To the traveller, no life is more interest- 
ing, and yet there is none with which it is so difficult to 
get into close and unconventional contact. Ordinarily, 
we catch only casual glimpses. For this reason I have 
wandered much on rural byways, and lodged most of 
the time at village hotels or in rustic homes. My trips 
have taken me to many characteristic and famous 
regions; but always, both in text and pictures, I have 
tried to show actual life and nature and to convey some 
of the pleasure I experienced in my intimate acquain- 
tance with the people. 

These "Highways and Byways" volumes are often 

consulted by persons who are planning pleasure tours. 

To make the books more helpful for this purpose each 

chapter has a note appended containing suggestions 

for intending travellers. With the aid of these notes, 

I think the reader can readiiy decide what regions are 

likely to prove particularly worth visiting, and will 

know how to see such regions with the most comfort 

and facility. 

Clifton Johnson. 
Hadley, Mass. 



This volume includes chapters on 
characteristic, picturesque, and 
historically attractive regions in the 
states of New York, Pennsylvania, 
New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and 
Virginia, and a chapter on Washington 
and its vicinity. The notes appended 
to each chapter give valuable infor- 
mation concerning automobile routes, 
and many facts and suggestions of 
interest to tourists in general. 



Highways and Byways from 
the St. Lawrence to Virginia 

i 

THE ADIRONDACK WINTER 

WHEN I decided to visit the Adirondacks I chose 
to go to Lake Placid. That particular vicinity 
has two superlative attractions — it is in the 
very heart of the "Great North Woods" where the 
mountains lift their giant forms highest; and it is here 
that John Brown, the apostle of freedom, lies buried 
on a little farm he once tilled. 

March had come, but winter had not loosed its grip, 
and the earth was wrapped in a coverlet of spotless 
white, and people driving on the highways jogged about 
on runners to the cheerful music of sleighbells. The 
snow softened and rounded every contour of the open 
country, it hid the roofs of the buildings, and Nature 
had used it in a recent storm to playfully decorate all 
the trees. 

My first walk began early in the morning when the 
children were on their way to school. They were sturdy 



2 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

youngsters, and the boys were apt to protect their legs 
and feet with heavy outer socks and overshoes such as 
woodsmen wear. "Well," one of the dwellers in the 
village by the lake commented, "the little tads need 
to dress that way, knocking around in the snow as 
they do." 

I could easily agree with him when later I passed a 
district schoolhouse that occupied a wayside knoll in 
an outlying section of the village. The children, while 
waiting for the final call of the bell in the little cupola, 
were having a riotous snowballing frolic and were 
powdered from head to foot. It seemed to be a good- 
natured tumult, except that the boys were kicking 
around one of the girl's rubbers, which the owner, with 
shrill-voiced protests, was trying to rescue. The school- 
house had stood there before any church had been built 
in the region, and John Brown used to attend Sunday 
services in it. 

Somewhat farther on I asked directions to the Brown 
Farm of a man at work in the highway digging through 
a drift. He said that the summer road to the farm was 
not broken out, and I would have to go roundabout by 
the winding winter road through the woods. While we 
were talking two men passed us. They had bags on 
their backs and were headed for some lumber camp. 
The previous day the town had voted for licence and 
these men had backed up their views on the subject by 
such liberal potations that the road was not wide enough 
for them. One of them, when he came to the drift, lost 



The Adirondack Winter 3 

his footing altogether and had to be helped up out of 
the snow by his companion. 

Presently I went on into the forest of bare-limbed 
birches and maples mingled with dark spruces and 
balsams, and when I emerged from the woodland there 
was the John Brown homestead before me off across a 
pasture. The group of buildings stood lonely amid the 
environing snows, the last home on a country byway. 
Beyond was a deep ravine and a little river, and all 
around the horizon loomed the sober mountain heights. 
Prominent amid the wooded ranges was Whiteface 
Mountain, a pyramidal peak whose summit was bare 
of trees, and white as if capped with eternal snow; and 
on the opposite horizon was the big dome of Mt. Marcy, 
also bare and white. 

The Brown Farm is the property of the state, and a 
caretaker occupies the low, rambling, unpainted house. 
Except for a veranda on two sides, the dwelling is 
practically as it was when Brown lived in it from 1849 
to the time of his fatal raid on Harper's Ferry. There 
were no trees about the buildings, and this was the case 
with nearly all the other scattered farm homes. They 
were rather frail and uncouth frame structures, wholly 
exposed to heat and cold and the assaults of the storms. 

A few steps from the dwelling of the old Abolitionist 
was an inclosure protected by a stout iron fence, and 
here was some shrubbery, a tall flagpole, an enormous 
rock, and a lowly gray gravestone sheltered from a 
souvenir-crazy public by a glass-sided box. Near the 



4 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

back door of the house was a great pile of wood, and 
in the shed a man was sawing the sticks into stove 
length. He was preparing his fuel supply for the coming 
twelve months, and behind him rose the compact piles 
of split wood. For a little while he left his work to 
show me a small room that had been Brown's "office," 
and which contained in its rude, meagre furnishings a 
round table, a straight-backed chair, and a cupboard 
"they claim" Brown had used. 

When I left the farm I was tempted to turn aside 
from the road and follow some footsteps that I thought 
would guide me across a wooded valley to another road 
I could see on an opposite hill. The trail meandered 
through the fields, and then down a steep wooded in- 
cline into a swamp. There my unknown guide seemed 
to have lost all sense of direction, and went zigzagging 
hither and thither, hurdling over so many fallen trees, 
that I became discouraged and turned back. 

But how beautiful it was in that wild woodland, 
which the all-enveloping snow had converted into a 
realm of magic! The dark branches of the evergreens 
drooped gracefully beneath the fluffy, glistening masses, 
and every stump and stone and fallen tree-trunk was 
softly cushioned. A light breeze whispered through 
the upper boughs and now and then dislodged some of 
the snow and sent it rustling down; and over all was 
the deep blue sky, no less marvellously pure in color 
than the snow itself. I heard a few chickadees softly 
chattering, and the scream of a jay, but I would hardly 



The Adirondack Winter 5 

have suspected that any other life existed in the quiet 
woodland, were it not that I saw the handwriting of the 
wild creatures on the fair page of the snow. There were 
their tell-tale tracks, and I wondered what pleasure, what 
business, or what stern need had made them fare forth. 

I did not go directly back to the village but continued 
to ramble on the country roads. Once I passed a 
cemetery. It was on the bleak shoulder of a hill at 
some remove from the nearest habitation, and in it was 
a woman with a muff pressed against her face crying 
in a heart-broken way over a new-made grave. Round- 
about was the vast white world and the big serene 
mountains, and overhead the majestic cerulean dome 
of the sky — nature so steadfast and unpitying con- 
trasted with that dark, whimpering human figure 
bowed with grief, helpless, crushed! 

Farther on I came across a man who was filling a pail 
from a dipping-place in a wayside stream. Many of 
the farm folk depend on such a source for their house- 
hold water-supply. The man informed me that I was 
on the old military road which was laid out westerly 
from Lake Champlain through the Adirondacks. 
"When they were making it," he said, "they did n't 
turn out for anything. They sighted from one hill to 
another and made a pretty middlin' straight road. 
But a good deal of it has been abandoned now." 

I mentioned that I had been to the John Brown 
Farm, and he said he had a picture of Brown that he 
would show me if I would go to the house with him. 



6 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

He led the way through a decrepit gate, and escorted 
me into the sitting-room, where I sat down by the 
stove. There was a rag carpet on the floor, and, con- 
spicuous on the walls, were ghastly, enlarged photo- 
graphs in ponderous frames. My host was smoking a 
pipe, and he continued to wear his hat — a faded, band- 
less affair with the crown full of holes like a pepper box. 
We were soon joined by his mother, a thin, elderly 
woman, who wore spectacles and earrings. 

"Here is the picture of John Brown," the man said, 
"and I want you to see this other picture of a hen and 
rooster that I own. A feller took that picture with a 
little hand camera. Well, sir, he ketched 'em just right. 
They was on a dung hill, and the rooster was crowing. 
One of the storekeepers in the village is goin' to have 
the photograph enlarged to put in his window. Ain't 
that rooster natural as life now? 

"Did the man over on the farm take the cover off 
the gravestone for you?" 

"No," I replied, "probably it is frozen down." 

"That don't matter," my host commented. "He'd 
'a' worked like the old Harry to get it up if you'd given 
him a quarter. The stone would have been all gone 
long ago if they did n't keep it protected. If you had 
a piece off it as big as the end of your thumb you could 
sell it for a good price. 

"How'd you like to have that caretaker's job? 
He ought to be able to make money hand over 
fist. He don't have to pay out for taxes, or repairs, or 



F$i&£ii 




o 



The Adirondack Winter 7 

nawthin', and he can sell the crops, and he gits a good 
deal of small coin from the visitors. He has a good 
chance." 

"I'm seventy-seven years old," the woman observed, 
"and I can remember when the Browns drove in their 
cattle at the time they came here." 

"When I was a young feller goin' to school," the man 
said, "I was at a neighbor's one day, and they had an 
ox there that they told me had belonged to John Brown. 
He was about the biggest ox I ever see. My gosh! he 
looked like a mountain beside of me." 

"I was often over to John Brown's house when he 
lived there," the woman said. " 'Twa'n't but a few 
steps from where I lived. But the most I remember 
about his looks was the way his hair was brushed 
straight up from his forehead. He had a great bushy 
beard when he died, but I think he grew that for a dis- 
guise. Earlier he was a smooth-faced man. The family 
would walk to church at the schoolhouse. We did n't 
think we'd got to ride every time we went anywhere in 
them days. I s'pose it was a mile and a half. The 
youngest child was a babe the last part of the time the 
Browns lived here, and Watson Brown would come to 
church carrying the babe in his arms. Watson is the 
one they claimed had his bones wired together. Let 
me see — when did they bring those bodies here? It 
was the summer Mary Bush died, and that was more 
than twenty years ago. You know two of John Brown's 
sons was killed at Harper's Ferry — Oliver and Watson. 



8 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

Well, they say a doctor who wanted a skeleton got hold 
of Watson's body, and when the bones was sent home 
to be buried on the old farm they was wired together. 
That's what I've always heard. 

"But you can't tell for certain what to believe and 
what not. Once I was out on the piazza with my big 
spinning-wheel twisting yarn, and some city people 
stopped to see me work. They'd been over to the John 
Brown Farm, and pretty soon they sot down on the 
edge of the piazza and begun to tell about this and that 
thing at the farm which had belonged to John Brown. 
Well, John Brown never see any of them things. But 
when people tell a story long enough it gets to be a 
fact." 

"I'll tell you, my friend," the man said with em- 
phasis, "there's more daubed on to John Brown's 
history than a little. It's something like the old man's 
cider barrel. He said it was the same old cider barrel, 
but he'd had to repair it from time to time till there 
wa'n't nawthin left of the original barrel but the 
bunghole. 

"You'd be surprised how many people visit that 
farm in the summer. If I could have a cent apiece for 
those that go there — gracious! I'd be rich. It's a sort 
of craze. There's some persons just as animated over 
that grave as over a gold mine. 

"Here, I want you to look at this grub hoe. You 
can see that it is old-fashioned, and was made by a 
blacksmith. I found it over on the John Brown Farm. 



The Adirondack Winter 9 

We were having a big conflagration, and I was then 
fighting fire. I was using a common shovel, and this 
hoe was about a foot down in the ground. I was glad 
to get it — golly, yes! and I put a club into it, and dug 
dirt to fight the fire with. I 'spose, because I found it 
on John Brown's farm, I might say it was his'n — sure 
it was! Then just a little corner of it would be worth 
as much as ten dollars for a souvenir. 

"That was an awful fire we had. It was in 1908, 
and a very dry time. They were having fires all over 
the country. Fires begun in the Adirondacks 'long 
about the middle of summer. We could n't breathe 
nawthin' but smoke for a while. Once the fire was 
right up here back of us in the woods. That was a little 
closter than we wanted it to be. It was so near we 
did n't dare sleep nights. Why, we reckoned our place 
was a goner and we kep' barrels and tubs, and such like, 
full of water ready all around the barn. But the wind 
happened to favor us. At night we could see the fires 
burning on the mountains in every direction. They 
had a darn nice little time with the fire on that moun- 
tain you can see from the window over to the north- 
ward. There was lots of downstuff, and though the 
mountain is three miles away we could hear the fire 
roaring like the noise of a high wind. It cleaned off 
the hull mountain and left nawthin' but the bare rocks 
and a few charred tree trunks. 

"That's the worst fire we've ever had, but I expect 
there's goin' to be just as big in the future, the way 



io Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

they're fixin' things. You know the state has some 
great forest reserves here, and the laws are very strict 
about the timber, and the officials are quick to prose- 
cute and fine trespassers. There's considerable chewin' 
about it, and somebody is goin' to burn the state forest 
out of revenge. It's gettin' so a poor man don't have 
any chance. They put his nose down on the grindstone 
and make him turn the handle. You've got to have a 
licence to carry a gun, and it's 'gainst the law to keep 
a dog unless he's tagged and registered. Most of the 
year I can't, 'cordin' to law, go right out there in the 
yard and rake up a mess of chips and burn 'em. I 
could this time of year, but what's the use? The chips 
would n't burn. One of our neighbors piled up some 
stumps in the middle of a ploughed field and burned 
'em. They fined him twenty-five dollars. Would n't 
that make you crusty? 

"The state has put men on the mountain tops to 
watch for fires in the dry part of the year. Telephone 
lines connect the lookout stations with the villages, so 
as soon as a fire starts we know where it is and get right 
out to fight it. But they take these college pups just 
graduated for the fire patrol. Why can't some of us 
local men have the job? It's a snap; for they're paid 
seventy-five or eighty dollars a month. That money 
would come in pretty handy for some of us here. You 
can't hardly make a livin' farmin'. The climate is too 
cold to raise corn or to ripen potatoes, and the biggest 
share of the men go to the woods in winter. That's 




Getting a pail oj water 



The Adirondack Winter n 

where I'd be if it wa'n't for mother. But there's just 
her 'n me, and she don't like to stay alone. Besides, 
somebody had to do the chores." 

"We been havin' very mild weather for the time of 
year," the woman said. "I never saw such a winter, 
old as I am. We've had very few zero nights, and only 
a little snow. I can remember winters when the snow 
was so deep you could n't see a fence nowhere." 

"Yes," the man added, "this road here used to have 
a high zigzag rail fence along it to keep cattle in the 
pastures. Stakes was drove at every angle, and there's 
been so much snow you could n't see none of them 
stakes. When I was young it was mostly forest here, 
and the snow did n't drift much, but now, by gol! the 
trees along the roads have been cut off, and the wind 
gets a chance to stir the snow around." 

"We used to travel a good deal on horseback," the 
woman said. "My folks lived in Keene, over the 
mountain, and my Uncle Lon lived here. You could n't 
hardly drive a wagon over the mountain road the stones 
were so high. Uncle Lon liked to have me come and 
visit at his house and help take care of the children. 
At the time I made my first visit I was so small I had 
to stand up on a little chair to wash the dishes, and 
uncle fetched me on horseback in his arms. When I 
grew larger I'd ride on the horse behind him. Like 
enough I'd stay three or four months. I went to school 
some, but people wa'n't very particular then whether 
the children got any education or not." 



12 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

"That's so," the man corroborated, "the parents 
would send a boy to school, and if he went, all right, 
and if he did n't go, all right. I've started for school 
and never see it that day. Maybe I'd come down to 
your house, and you'd have a boy, and the two of us 
would go off playing. I never went to school much any 
way, by gracious ! Father had inflammatory rheumatism 
and wa'n't sost he could do anything. I had to begin 
workin' pretty young. Soon as I could pick up a pan 
of chips I was at it. But the children are obleeged to 
go to school now, and if a boy stays away the truant 
officer is at his heels, and when he finds the boy fishin' 
or something he says, 'What in thunder are you doin' 
here?' and sends him back to his books. 

"Children at twelve years old now know more than 
a man grown did under the old style. But they don't 
study at school. They just recite, and then bring their 
books home and spend all the evenin' writin' out their 
lessons for the next day. They know more, and yet 
they ain't as hardy as they used to be. It's as the 
Bible says — 'People grow weaker as they grow wiser.' 

"When I was a boy we had three months' school in 
winter, and the same in summer, in charge of common 
deestrict school teachers who never'd had much 
schoolin' themselves. They boarded round and stayed 
at the houses of the folks who sent children — three 
nights a term for each scholar. Some of us lived two 
or three miles from the schoolhouse, and if the snow 
come deep the man who lived farthest off on a road 



The Adirondack Winter 13 

would probably take his ox team and break out a track 
and pick up the scholars along. 

"Well, what changes have taken place since I was a 
boy! Gosh! who'd ever think I'd live to see a wagon 
goin' rippity slash through the street with no horse 
hitched to it; or a bicycle goin' along without havin' 
to pump it! And there's trolley cars. Golly! I could n't 
understand 'em at all until I went out of the mountains 
and saw 'em. 

"Fifty years ago this country was pretty much 
primeval forest, with families startin' in here and there 
to clear up a chunk of land. They'd chop down the 
trees and pile 'em up and burn 'em. Then they'd put 
in potatoes, turnips, or oats, and as soon as they could 
they'd stock the ground down in among the stumps to 
raise some hay for their cattle. You'd understand 
what it means to start a home in the wilderness if you'd 
drove a single A drag as much as I have on new land 
where it's nawthin' but ketch and twitch and jerk 
around all the time. 

"After a while the city people began to come in here 
for the huntin' and fishin'. There was no accommoda- 
tion for them except at the little farmhouses, and per- 
haps the farmers did n't have any room to spare. But 
those fellers would n't take 'No' for an answer. If 
they could n't get a chance to sleep on one of the cord 
bedsteads they'd sleep on the iioor, or in the barn — 
anywhere. And they were men with money, mind you 
— lots of it. They don't rough it that way now. Why, 



14 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

even the fellers they hire to drive 'em around got to 
have on gloves, and a b'iled shirt, and a plug hat; and 
you can't tell the drivers from the city men. 

"We had bears and wolves here, when I was a small 
kid, and this was a wild country. Good Lord! I've 
seen deer playin' down here on the plains like a mess of 
calves. Deer are naturally tame, and a good deal like 
the sheep specie. You'd see one of 'em or hear a fawn 
blat, you know, and you'd take your gun and go out 
and knock it down in no time. But now they've been 
so frightened they keep way back in the big woods; 
and yet the law won't let you kill nawthin' but bucks 
and only two of them in a season. The trouble is 
there's too many hunters, and all kinds of game is 
gettin' scarce." 

"Uncle Lon killed lots of deer," the woman observed. 
"He could go out and shoot one anytime. I know 
we'd just got up one mornin' and his wife said, 'We 
ain't got no meat.' " 

"He went to the door and looked down on the 
meadow, and there he see four deer feedin'. 'Now 
don't make no noise,' he says, and he crep' down a 
little ways and shot one of the deer, and we had venison 
for breakfast. 

"I always liked this country. I went away to live 
once, but I was glad to git back. It seems more like 
home to me here than any other place. But the 
timber's gittin' less and less, and the region don't look 
like it used to look." 



The Adirondack Winter 15 

"This used to be a great country for fishin'," the 
man affirmed. "Why, right out in the little brook that 
you see in the holler you could ketch trout that would 
weigh over a pound. You did n't have to travel a life- 
time to get a mess of fish. No, sir! you could fish down 
that brook twenty rods and git all you could eat — 
more'n you could git fishin' twenty miles now. What 
I call sport is all gone. Oh, gol! there ain't nawthin' 
now, my friend. They've cut down the big forests, the 
fire has got in here, and the brooks and streams are 
dryin' up. I don't see what people come up here for. 
Still, it's a healthy climate, and the air is fine for con- 
sumptives. Saranac Lake is a great resort for lungers, 
but they knock the summer business and are not allowed 
at the Lake Placid hotels. 

"You ought to 'a' been here last week to our carnival. 
It was a two days' affair, and we kep' things busy all 
the time. We had shows, marchin' and drillin', horse- 
racin', slidin', and skatin'; and it was all got up by 
just us folks here, and we chipped in so as to have some 
little purses for prizes. If we're goin' to have any fun 
here in the mountains we got to provide it ourselves. 
The men would git onto their double sleds and go down 
the toboggan slides clear across the lake, three quarters 
of a mile. Oh, my lord! they went so fast they had to 
lean against each other way over forward to keep on. 

"You'd 'a' laughed to see the skatin' races. One of 
the skaters was a young feller named Hennessy — Jim 
Hennessy's son. He's only sixteen, and small and slim. 



16 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

Good land! his leg ain't as big as my wrist, and that's 
the truth if I don't ever speak again. You'd say the 
wind would blow him over, he's so slender. But he 
took the prize in the boy's class, and then he entered 
the men's class in competition with some great big 
fellers from the hotels. It was surprisin' what energy 
there was in that kid. He dropped right behind the 
fastest one of the men skaters and trailed him. I 
wanted to have a little fun, and I said to some of the 
hotel fellers standin' lookin' on, 'Here's ten dollars 
that the blue-shirted feller wins.' 

"But they did n't dare to take me up. It was a two 
mile course, and when they neared the end Hennessy 
made a spurt and came in ahead. 'What do you think 
of my little Irishman now?' I says. Oh, wa'n't the 
hotel men sick! 

"One evenin' of the carnival the folks dressed up in 
fancy costumes. They rigged up in every darned thing 
you could think of to disguise 'em. They was dressed 
in all kinds of shapes — as old farmers, Indians, niggers, 
and everything. Oh! 'twas lovely. Two of the girls 
fixed up as angels, wings and all, and they was dandy. 
You could n't tell who they was — even their own 
mothers did n't know 'em." 

It was evening when I returned to the village, and 
the sun had set, and all the landscape was in shadow 
except the mountain summits. The higher ridges had 
been glazed by an ice storm, and while their bases were 
a dusky purple the sunlight lingered on the frosty 



The Adirondack Winter 17 

heights imparting a soft ethereal glow that was quite 
Alpine in its effect. 

I had been advised to call on Byron Brewster, if I 
wanted information about John Brown. "You get 
Byron wound up and you'll hear something," my ad- 
viser declared. 

So I called on him. "John Brown came here," he 
said, "when this was new country, but he bought a 
farm where a house had been built and some of the 
woods cleared off. The nearest village was two miles 
west at Saranac Lake, where there was a little store 
and possibly a dozen houses. We were connected with 
the outside world by a stage line that had its eastern 
terminus on Lake Champlain. The driver made a trip 
once a week, and he went on horseback usually. When 
he took a wagon it was an old-fashioned buckboard. 

"One of the Abolitionist leaders owned a great tract 
of Adirondack land, and they planned to settle colonies 
of free negroes on it. Brown brought some of the colored 
people here, but they could n't stand so cold a climate, 
and they did n't stay long. 

"Brown's oldest son, Oliver, married my sister, and 
the little room that is called Brown's office was their 
bedroom. Brown never had any use for an office in 
the house, for he never was to home only a few days at 
a time. He was busy travelling around freeing the 
slaves, a little squad at a time. I know because I lived 
in his family for several years. My folks had ten 
children — the families was all large here then — and if a 



1 8 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

kid could be disposed of so he earned his own living, so 
much the better. Captain John Brown was a noble 
man, and he had a saint for a woman — one of the finest 
this world ever had. They were very poor and could 
just barely get along; and I remember this — I never 
shall forget it — when Brown was talking with the 
family about their hardships he told 'em it was always 
darkest just before the dawn. He was sure God would 
take care of them. Oh! yes, I tell you he believed in 
the Almighty as much as any man who ever lived. All 
of his family were in sympathy with him, and were 
ready to risk their lives in the cause of freedom. My 
sister went down to where he and his followers lived in 
a farmhouse near Harper's Ferry and kep' house for 
'em while they was gettin' ready to capture the arsenal." 

One evening I dropped in at a village store where 
several teamsters were lounging on counters and boxes 
visiting and smoking. They were talking about the 
logs they had been drawing and other forest topics. It 
seemed that the villagers drew most of the logs from 
the woods to the mills or the streamsides, and that the 
lumberjacks in the camps were as a rule immigrants 
"from all over the world," with Canadian French, 
"Polocks," and Italians predominant. 

I asked how soon the Adirondack forests were likely 
to be exhausted. 

"Well," one of the men responded, "twenty years 
ago a pulp mill was built here, and they claimed then 
that five years would do the forest up, and our good 




A load of logs on Lake Placid 



The Adirondack Winter 19 

timber would be all gone; but we are getting out just 
as much now as ever, and there's lots left. 

"There ain't much big pine left on the mountains," 
the storekeeper remarked. "The biggest pine I've 
seen lately was one the flood brought down on the 
meadow last spring. It was an old walloper, and sound 
as a nut. Some one up above had used it for a foot- 
bridge. The sawed lumber from it sold for seventy-five 
dollars." 

"Look at the fine timber back here on the state 
land," one of the teamsters said. "There's not only 
the growing trees, but millions of feet of dead trees 
where the fires have run through that are still good saw 
timber and pulp wood. Those dead trees ought to be 
got out instead of bein' allowed to lay there rottin' 
doin' no good to nobody. But the state won't hardly 
let you cut a whipstalk on its land, and if you take off 
a tree — even a dead one — you're fined twenty-five 
dollars." 

"Well," the storekeeper said, "if people were given 
a chance to take the dead timber it would n't be long 
before they'd get in the green timber. They will sneak 
it off in spite of everything. They just hog it. There's 
houses right here in this town built out of timber stole 
from the state." 

"The fire has got more timber than the lumberjacks 
have here in the Adirondacks," one of the teamsters 
asserted. 

"Yes," the storekeeper agreed, "in 1908 there was 



20 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

one piece of fire over twelve miles long. I went through 
to Utica on the train and saw fire every few minutes, 
either in the grass or the woods, the whole distance. 
At the same time there was fire every gol darn inch of 
the way from here to Loon Lake. For weeks we 
could n't see the mountains the smoke was so thick. 
Lots of the summer people dug out. They were afraid 
of their lives. I used to work all the week in the store 
and go out Sundays to fight fire. We could n't make 
much headway. It was the same as if a man tried to 
bail out the ocean — pretty near. The fire would break 
across the paths we made to stop it, and we could 
only keep narrowing it up a little. It burnt till we 
had a snowstorm the week before election. Fighting 
forest fires that year cost this town ten thousand 
dollars. 

"Another bad year was 1902. We had windy days 
then when the fire went faster'n a man could run, and 
flashed right up to the top of the green balsams. Some 
of our bad fires are started by the city men. They get 
a drink or two into 'em and then don't know nothin' 
and are careless about their campfires." 

"Well, sir, we had a saucy little fight year before 
last," a teamster remarked. "There'd been a thunder- 
storm, with a little spurt of rain, and the lightning 
started a blaze in some dry timber. It burnt over 
thirty or forty acres before we got it under control, and 
then we had to keep men watching it for a week because 
it had worked down into the duff. That duff was 



The Adirondack Winter 21 

fifteen inches or so thick, and the fire kept smould- 
ering in it and every little while would break out. 

"I worked for Rockefeller most of that season. You 
know he has a big estate down below here a ways. 
There used to be farmhouses — yes, and villages on it, 
but he bought the owners all out, or froze 'em out. One 
feller was determined not to sell, and as a sample of 
how things was made uncomfortable for him I heard 
tell that two men came to his house once and made him 
a present of some venison. They had hardly gone when 
the game warden dropped in and arrested him for 
havin' venison in his house. All such tricks was worked 
on him, and he spent every cent he was worth fighting 
lawsuits. People wa'n't allowed to fish on the property, 
and the women wa'n't allowed to pick berries on it. A 
good deal of hard feeling was stirred up, and Rockefeller 
would scoot from the train to his house, and pull the 
curtains down, 'fraid they'd shoot him. Oh! he was 
awful scairt." 

The storekeeper had picked up a bunch of keys from 
his desk and he jingled them suggestively and was 
buttoning up his coat. It was evident that he intended 
to close up, and the conclave got off the boxes and 
counters and straggled out of the door. 

One day I walked far up on the frostbound Lake 
Placid. There were three roads on the ice running along 
parallel only a few feet apart. The central road was a 
driveway, and the other two were merely ploughed out 
trails to catch the drifting snow. By and by I met a 



22 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

load of logs, and the driver stopped to speak with me. 
He had started out from the village at six o'clock that 
morning, driven some eight miles to a logging camp at 
the far end of the lake, and now was returning. On his 
big, broad sled were twenty-five logs, thirteen feet long, 
making a load that weighed about six tons. It seemed 
a wonder that a single pair of horses could draw it. 

I had gone as far as I cared to go up the wide lonely 
expanse of the lake, and the teamster invited me to ride 
with him back to the town. So I clambered up beside 
him on the ponderous load. As we went along the ice 
snapped and cracked beneath us, but it was eighteen 
inches thick and perfectly safe. Log drawing had 
begun when the ice was half that thickness, but they 
did not venture to carry as heavy loads. Disasters 
occasionally occur; and yet, whether it is the load, or 
the horses, or both that break through, the results are 
seldom serious. The previous winter, however, two 
horses had drowned. They broke through thin ice, 
and though dragged out again and again the ice gave 
way beneath their weight. Curiously enough, the ice 
is safest on warm days. Then it is elastic, but in very 
cold weather it is brittle, and is contracting and crack- 
ing. Sometimes a load will drive onto a small section 
surrounded by fresh cracks, and down it goes. Usually 
the ice is burdened with so much snow that water oozes 
up through the cracks and makes the road slushy and 
rough. 

One would think that such thick ice would linger a 



The Adirondack Winter 23 

long time in the spring, but the teamster affirmed that 
when they got a warm south wind the ice disappeared 
in about two days. He said it sank in the lake. 

There were hills to go down when we reached the 
village, and I got off on the verge of the first steep 
pitch. The driver protested that there was no danger, 
but when I saw the big load go swerving down the icy 
incline with the horses pushed into a trot in spite of 
their backward bracing, a smashup seemed easily 
possible. 

On the day that I left the mountains it was snowing, 
and the storm-swept open country, and the stumplands, 
and the fire-wrecked woods looked dreary enough. 
The wind blew, and the falling flakes filled the air with 
a wild flurry, and the loose new snow sifted along on 
the hard older snow in a drifting smother. It was "a 
rough day out," but there was serenity in the snow- 
adorned forest that had escaped the fires. There the 
woodland aisles were delicately atmospheric and more 
fairy-like than ever. 

Notes. — The Adirondacks are the most popular summer and 
hunting resort in the state. They stretch from' near Canada almost 
to the Mohawk River, a distance of 120 miles; and from Lake 
Champlain about 80 miles westerly. The loftiest peak is Mt. Marcy, 
which attains a height of 5,345 feet. It has several rivals that are 
not much lower. Nearly the entire mountain region, or Adirondack 
Wilderness as it is called, is densely covered with forest, and lumber- 
ing is carried on extensively. Great quantities of spruce, hemlock, 
and other timber are annually floated down to the Hudson and the 
St. Lawrence. The region contains more than 1,000 lakes varying 



24 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

in size from a few acres to 20 square miles. One of these, "Tear of 
the Clouds," is over 4,000 feet above the sea level, and is the source 
of the Hudson. Among the wild creatures to be found in the dis- 
trict are catamounts, bears, deer, otters, badgers, eagles, and loons. 
The lakes and streams are well stocked with trout. Flies and 
mosquitoes are troublesome in June and July. 

The most frequented regions are those of Saranac and St. Regis 
Lakes, Lake Placid, and Keene Valley, all of which contain numer- 
ous hotels and summer camps. The hotels are generally comforta- 
ble, and some are luxurious. Guides and canoes can be secured at 
all the chief resorts. 

The principal gateways to the mountains are Utica and Saratoga 
on the south, Westport, Port Kent, and Plattsburg on the east, and 
Malone on the north. Much of the region is accessible to automo- 
biles, and it has become a favorite touring ground for motorists. 
The roads are for the most part dirt, and some of them are very 
good, but others are rough and winding, and there are places where 
sand or clay are encountered. 

The region east of the Adirondacks abounds in scenic and historic 
attraction, and a most attractive trip can be made from Saratoga to 
Plattsburg, 127 miles. There is a good dirt or macadam road nearly 
all the way. Saratoga itself is interesting as one of the oldest and 
most frequented of our watering-places. Among the popular drives 
in the vicinity is that to the top of Mt. McGregor, 1,200 feet high. 
The distance is 10 miles. The cottage in which General Grant died 
in 1885 is located on the summit. East of Saratoga, 12 miles, near 
Schuylerville was fought, in October, 1777, the battle which resulted 
in the surrender of the British army under General Burgoyne. 

An island in the Hudson River at Glens Falls, 19 miles north of 
Saratoga is the scene of some of the most famous incidents in 
Cooper's "Last of the Mohicans." At 28 miles on this route is Lake 
George. Fort William Henry once stood on the shore here, and 
there was much fighting in the region during the French and Indian 
wars. The lake is 33 miles long and 3 miles wide. Wooded moun- 



The Adirondack Winter 25 

tains flank it on both sides, and islands to the number of 220 dot its 
surface. The road follows the west shore of the lake, and presently 
reaches the borders of Lake Champlain near old Fort Ticonderoga, 
recently restored. Farther north it passes the ruined fortifications 
at Crown Point. Near Keesville on this route is the Ausable Chasm, 
where the Ausable River flows through a rocky gorge 100 to 175 feet 
deep and only 20 to 40 feet wide. This is considered the most won- 
derful piece of Nature's work of its kind east of the Rocky Moun- 
tains. Waterfalls and rapids add to its charm. 



II 



MIDSUMMER IN THE CATSKILLS 

THE Mountains of the Sky, as the Indians called 
them, or the Wildcat Creek Mountains, as they 
would be called if the Dutch word Catskill was 
translated into English, include one height with an 
altitude of 4,200 feet, and there are numerous other 
heights in the group that are genuinely impressive in 
their upward soaring. Yet none of them are at all 
savage, and the region has a certain gentleness of aspect 
that is restful and charming. The mountains them- 
selves, instead of rising in craggy steeps, nearly always 
lift their shaggy, wooded shoulders in mild undulations; 
and in the tangle of valleys you rarely fail to find either 
an occasional village or scattered farms. 

Nevertheless, the region is one that can never be 
wholly tamed. A formal monotony of straight roads 
and right-angled corners, and fields of regular size and 
shape is forever impossible. The roadways almost of 
necessity adapt themselves to the lay of the land, and 
are full of graceful curves and piquant surprises. 

Another charm of this Catskill country is its streams. 
Everywhere you go you hear the purl of brooks in their 
shadowed, rocky hollows, and not infrequently the 
melody of a waterfall; and the water is bright and pure, 




A summer afternoon 



Midsummer in the Catskills 27 

and continues as of yore to be the lurking-place of the 
speckled trout. 

The section that has most appealed to me is not 
where the mountains soar highest, but more westerly 
where the country becomes distinctly pastoral and the 
farms creep far up the great billowy hills. Sometimes 
the cleared land sweeps right over the giant summits, 
but oftener the highest portion of the hill has a green 
cap of woodland. It is a pretty sight as you look from 
one hill across to others and see the tilled fields forming 
a sort of patchwork quilt of varying shapes and tints. 
The seams of the quilt are sturdy stone walls erected 
at an infinite expense of time and labor in gathering 
the stones from the land and piling them into barriers, 
and then year after year keeping these barriers in re- 
pair; for even the stoutest stone wall is not permanent. 
The frosts gradually, but surely, heave it into complete 
ruin if it is neglected. 

One of my stopping-places was a sleepy little village 
around which the big hills rose on every side. At the 
close of a warm August day I sat after supper on 
the piazza of the rustic hotel with the landlord and 
his wife. Some of the neighbors who had been off 
berrying were plodding homeward on the adjacent 
walk, and the landlady asked them what luck they 
had had. 

"There ain't as many berries as usual," one of the 
pickers responded, "and everybody is after 'em. Why, 
up on Cold Hill, where we went, there was seven people 



28 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

to one huckleberry; and, by gracious! it's a long walk 
there and back, I tell yer." 

"But you've got your pails full," the landlady com- 
mented. 

"Oh, we got our share, don't cher know," the picker 
said, "and now we must hurry along so as to have time 
tonight to look 'em over. That's quite a job." 

Meanwhile the landlord was talking with a small 
boy of the party. Their bantering conversation came 
to an end with the landlord's saying: "Want to fight? 
But what's the use? You could n't lick a postage 
stamp." 

The next morning I went for a long walk and followed 
a winding highway that for mile after mile climbed a 
seemingly endless hill. It was a rather attractive road 
with little farms scattered along, and wooded heights 
rising on either side, and at last it brought me to where 
the land dipped into another valley, and I began to 
descend. The day was warm and pleasant, and mowing- 
machines were busy, and men with scythes were laying 
low the grass around the borders of the fields and on 
the slopes that were too steep for a machine. I was in 
no haste and occasionally stopped to chat with the 
roadside workers, or with persons I met on the highway. 
One of the latter was an old man who was hobbling 
along aided by a cane and pausing often in his slow 
progress to catch his breath. 

"I was eighty-three my last birthday," he said, "and 
I ain't good for nawthin' any more. That house you 



Midsummer in the Catskills 29 

see down the road used to be my home, but I don't live 
up here in the mountains now. My son has the old 
place, and I'm just visiting him this summer. I 
would n't care to stay the year through. It's cold here 
in winter — darnation cold, and the roads are blocked 
with snowdrifts. 

"This used to be a great country for game. We had 
wild pigeons by the million. There was such flocks 
that they darkened the sky. They built their nests on 
the mountains along the highest ridges. Every tree, 
almost, would have nests in it. The nests was usually 
made out of coarse sticks, but I remember a season 
when the pigeons carried away most of a haystack I 
had and used it for nest-building. As a common thing 
they'd fly away every morning to their feeding-places 
at a distance, and come flying back at night, but once 
they got here before the snow was gone, and then I 
saw 'em scratching for food wherever there was a bare 
spot. 

"They never stayed here all summer, but went off 
when the young ones could fly, and returned when the 
buckwheat was ripening. We had to guard our fields 
or they'd have taken every kernel of the grain. 

"We used to snare 'em. We'd scatter buckwheat on 
some level place, and up above on a perch we'd have a 
captive pigeon with its eyes covered. When a flock 
was flying over we'd pull away the perch, and the bird 
would flutter to the ground as if it was going after the 
feed. That attracted the other pigeons to the spot. 



30 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

We had a net ready attached to a pole, and by pulling 
a string could make it flop over the birds when enough 
had lit, and then we had 'em. 

"Once I was out layin' behind a wall watchin' for 
pigeons, and they come and lit in an old dead cherry 
tree just as thick as they could stick — hundreds on that 
one tree. I killed thirteen of 'em at a single shot. 

"They was mighty nice eating, and there was more 
meat on 'em than you'd naturally expect, for they 
did n't look as large as their bodies really were. That 
was because their feathers lay so snug; but when a 
bird was picked it was near as big as a dove. 

"Lots of men went to the mountains after squabs in 
the spring, and when the old birds at the nesting-place 
were disturbed they'd fly up in such numbers their 
wings made a sound like thunder. The men would 
climb the trees after the squabs, or they'd cut the trees 
down. Sometimes they'd cut off acres and acres. The 
squabs were shipped to the cities, and I've known men 
to get a two hundred dollar check for a single shipment. 

"There were great numbers of pigeons until about 
1875. Then they suddenly disappeared. It is said that 
they all perished in a great storm at sea while migrat- 
ing, and that vast quantities of their bodies washed up 
on the shores." 

Toward night I engaged lodging at a farmhouse that 
was well up on one of the vast slopes overlooking an 
impressive succession of vales and hills. There I 
stayed several days. The farm made a specialty of 



Midsummer in the Catskills 31 

dairying, and every morning Jim and Ned, the young 
men of the household, together with Mrs. Ned and the 
hired man, were up early enough to milk the fifty cows 
by six o'clock. Then the cows went in a straggling line 
over the hill to the pasture, and the milkers came in to 
breakfast. One feature of the morning bill of fare was 
buckwheat cakes. The family had them for breakfast 
the year around, and ate them with pork fat, butter, 
or maple sugar. 

During the day the men and boys were busy haying, 
but about four o'clock in the afternoon two of the 
youngsters and their dog went to the brushy pasture 
after the cows. At the boys' bidding the dog ran about 
over the hills and through the clumps of trees and 
bushes gathering the scattered herd and barking 
at the lingerers until he brought them to the bars. 
There the boys counted them as they passed through 
and made sure they had them all. 

The supper hour was five, and the milking immedi- 
ately followed. Women help with the milking on 
nearly all the farms. " But they don't like it very well," 
Ned observed, "and they feel abused unless the men 
do the bulk of it." 

"Well," Jim said, "I think the farmers would be 
better off if they'd lighten the job of milking by keeping 
fewer cows. As it is they pay out most of the money 
they get for their milk to buy feed. But I must say 
they're generally prosperous. You take our next 
neighbor down the road, for instance. About a dozen 



32 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

years ago he bought that place for six thousand dollars. 
He's got it all paid for, and he could sell it for twice 
that now. The family that owned it before he did all 
had the typhoid but one, and there were nine of 'em. 
Seven died, and most everybody was afraid to live on 
the place. But this man was n't, and he got it cheap. 
He went there with his wife and children, and not one 
of 'em has had a sick day since." 

I came across this neighbor one day as he was plough- 
ing. The ground was surprisingly stony. Indeed, the 
soil of all the fields, outside of the alluvial deposits in 
the valleys, was like a vast plum-pudding in which 
there was about an equal proportion of stones and 
earth. The plough was continually scraping the stones 
or being jerked this way and that by them. Some. of 
the biggest that were brought up to the surface would 
later be dragged off, but it was not the custom to trouble 
with any of less size than a man's hat. 

"It's so stony we don't plough any oftener than we 
can help," the farmer said. "I'm turning this sod 
under on account of the hawkweed. There's a snag 
of it on this lot. I guess it'll soon get all over the world 
if it keeps spreadin' the way it has here. It'll grow on 
any land that ain't boggy. Where a spring dreans it 
won't do nothin', but back on the hills where the ground 
is perfectly dry it flourishes; and the dryer the weather 
the better it does. By cultivating a crop we can kill it 
out, but if we seed the land down, it gradually comes 
back. Yes, you got to fight it all the while, my friend. 



Midsummer in the Catskills 33 

The leaves and the blossom-stems are covered with a 
kind of fuzz, and when you are haying that there dry 
fuzz flies in the air and raises the dickens with you. It 
gets in your nose and throat, and it tickles and makes 
you sneeze. You might as well work in cayenne pepper. 
It makes your eyes smart, too. Some can't handle the 
hay in the barn at all on account of the hawkweed dust. 
It knocks 'em out. Even in winter it'll bother you some 
when you're getting hay from the mow to feed the stock. 
But hawkweed makes good pasturage. We turn in the 
cattle in the spring and they keep it browsed down. If 
they did n't it would mat right over everything." 

The pest did not become troublesome until about 
twenty years ago. It has a gay blossom that is quite 
attractive, and no doubt it escaped to the fields from 
some woman's posie pot. 

Another foe that the farmer has to fight is the wood- 
chuck. The creatures have their burrows along the 
roadsides and in the fields everywhere. They eat a 
great deal of grass, and destroy the vegetables in the 
gardens, and make inroads on various of the field crops 
if they are not strenuously opposed. "I tell you," Jim 
said, "they're an awful mean thing, tromping down 
the mowing; and they make holes, and heave up heaps 
of dirt that are a great nuisance in your fields. There's 
millions of 'em this year — more'n I've ever seen before." 

His assertion as to their numbers seemed rather 
sweeping; but they were certainly exceedingly plenti- 
ful. If I went for a walk, when they were out feeding 



34 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

toward evening, I had the brown, furry creatures con- 
stantly in view, sometimes low in the grass, sometimes 
with heads poked up watching me, but oftenest scurry- 
ing to the shelter of their holes. 

Saturday evening the young people of the family 
drove to the village. It is the common habit of all the 
country round to resort thither on the final afternoon 
or evening of the week. They go partly to trade, partly 
for sociability. That is the merchants' harvest time, 
and the stores are open and the clerks busy till about 
midnight. A good many of the men drift to the hotels 
to drink, and this fag end of the week is the only time, 
except rainy days, when a man is likely to be seen 
staggering on the street. The haying hands are usually 
the worst drinkers, and on a rainy day they are apt to 
want their pay that they may spend it at some hotel 
bar. Nor are they satisfied to stop drinking and return 
to work until their money is gone. 

One of the midsummer attractions of Saturday night 
at the village is a dance, and people come to it from 
seven or eight miles around. About half the dancers 
are city vacation visitors, but they mix in a very 
friendly way with the country folk, and harmony and 
a lively enjoyment of the occasion are general. 

"We're supposed to quit at twelve o'clock," Ned 
said to me, "but if we get a set on just before that hour 
we dance it out. Most of us stay till the last minute. 
Here's Emmy, for instance," and he indicated his wife 
— "she'd rather dance than eat. There's always a good 




Coming from the hay field 



Midsummer in the Catskills 35 

crowd, and the hall is full. The women dance free, but 
a man has to pay ten cents for each set he dances. Some 
dance every set, others only one or two, but I guess 
they'd average five." 

A misty rain was falling when Sunday dawned, and 
after breakfast the men sat in the kitchen and smoked, 
or lay down on the sofas to doze. Presently Sam, the 
hired man, pulled out his watch and remarked that it 
was just seven minutes past eight. Ned commented 
that Sam only had luck to thank if he had hit the cor- 
rect time within half an hour. 

"I bet a dollar that my watch is right," Sam retorted. 

"I'll take your bet," Ned said. 

"I set that watch by the town clock yesterday," 
Sam explained. 

"Oh!" said Ned, "you might as well look at the heel 
of your shoe as at your watch or the town clock either 
to get the true time. That clock hain't been right sin' 
I can remember." 

In the afternoon the sky brightened and the sun 
shone forth on the wet earth. When the roads and 
grass were dried somewhat two of the men went in 
search of raspberries along the stone walls, intending 
to get a mess for supper, and Jim took his gun and spent 
a leisurely hour or two exterminating woodchucks. 

"I'd rather have gone fishing," he said, as he entered 
the house later. "Yes, fishing would have suited me 
better than gunning, if I had n't broke my pole the 
last time I went. I'd landed one nice big trout that 



36 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

weighed a pound and a half, but that one I lost, when 
the pole went back on me, was twice as big. By gol! 
it makes me cry to lose so many of them big trout." 

The last thing before bedtime Jim sat down by the 
stove with a stick in one hand and his jackknife in the 
other and began to whittle kindlings to start the morn- 
ing fire. "I do this every night," he said, "unless I 
forgit it. In that case I have to whittle the kindlings 
in the morning. This stick is hemlock. I like pine 
better, because it's easier to whittle, but one'll burn 
about as good as the other. I wish I had the big pine 
on the road to the village that the wind blowed over 
this spring. We had a storm then that was a storm. I 
was settin' by the window lookin' up toward the sap 
bush when it started, and I see the big maples bend over 
nearly to the ground. Some were uprooted, but most 
of 'em would spring back. The clouds were so black 
I thought we was goin' to have an awful shower, but 
it only rained a little spat. 

"Well," he said, as he shut up his knife, "I'd be 
saved considerable work whittling if we burned coal. 
Quite a good many families burn it in winter in the 
settin' room, but the price is so cussed high they don't 
use any more than they can help." 

One of my walks in the neighborhood was on what 
was known as the Hardscrabble Road. The portion of 
it, however, that I traversed was simply a pleasant, 
meandering country byway. Where it separated from 
the main road was*a^small,Vwhitewashed stone building 



Midsummer in the Catskills 37 

with the date 1813 cut into one of the stones, and I 
inquired the significance of this date from some people 
who were sitting on the piazza of a house near by. They 
seemed sociably inclined, and I entered the gate and 
joined them. The group included a middle-aged woman 
and her mother, and another gray-haired, elderly 
woman, whom her companions call Aunt Jane. On the 
grass in front of the piazza sat a little girl playing with 
a kitten. Two of the women were sewing, but Aunt 
Jane was a visitor and lived in the building with a date 
on it. 

"That date shows when it was built," she said. "It 
was a schoolhouse at first, and the schoolmaster lived 
in this house here. The children come from four or 
five miles around — yes, even from way over in Meeker 
Holler. It was such a back country then, and the 
roads were so poor that a good many come on horse- 
back. They kept their horses in the schoolmaster's 
barn. 

" Later other schoolhouses was built more convenient, 
and this one was dropped. Not long ago I happened 
to be out in the yard when a man who was drivin' along 
the road stopped and spoke to me, and he says, 'I'm 
goin' to be bold enough to tell you that I went to school 
in that building.' 

"Then he said he wished he could live in this region, 
and asked if I knew of any places for sale. I told him 
I did n't, and he looked around and said, 'Well, you've 
got God's own country here.' 



38 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

"They say that all the stones in the walls of our house 
was took off from that one acre yonder that the building 
stands on, but there were so many left that we had to 
work awful hard to get the land cleared so we could 
raise anything on it. 

"When they quit keepin' school in the buildin' it was 
fixed up for a church, and there was a pulpit made at 
one end of the old schoolroom, but for the last thirty 
or forty years it's been a house. Several families had 
lived into it before we got it, and it was all run down and 
was a horrid-lookin' thing. The lower part had been 
divided into rooms, but there wa'n't a yard of paper on 
the walls, and there wa'n't no chamber floor upstairs. 
The downstairs floor is still in there with its wide, old- 
fashioned boards, the same that was put in when the 
house was built; and there's the same padlock on the 
door that was on it when we moved in. 

"It's quite a comfortable house for a small family. 
The only fault I got to find with it is that we don't have 
anything better than crick water on the place. That's 
the reason I'm over here now. I came to get a pail of 
spring water and a little buttermilk." 

"Well," grandma said, "that house of yours certain 
was a snug little church when I was young. I've went 
there to meetin' many a Sunday." 

Just then a young turkey boldly joined the group on 
the piazza. "Now you go back," the housewife said. 
"Your company's not wanted." 

"One of them young turkeys picks its own ma," the 



Midsummer in the Catskills 39 

little girl observed. "It picked its ma under the 
throat." 

"We've had very good luck raisin' turkeys late 
years," the housewife said. "I s'pose we've got forty 
at present, and we've lost hardly any since they begun 
hatching in the spring. But Mrs. Brock says hers are 
dyin' off to beat all. There! I seen one fly up from 
among the cabbages down in the garden. Ruth, go 
and drive 'em out." 

"I don't want to," Ruth responded. "It's too 
far." 

"You'll walk farther'n that if your mama starts after 
you," the mother declared. "Besides, if you leave the 
turkeys in there they'll eat the cabbages all up and 
then you won't have none to eat yourself. They do 
like those cabbages, and they've got some of 'em just 
skinned." 

The little girl rose reluctantly and went to chase the 
turkeys. A team was approaching on the road. "Ain't 
that Haskins ag'in?" Grandma said. 

"Don't look like his team to me," Aunt Jane com- 
mented. 

"I think 'tis yet," Grandma said. "Yes, that's 
Haskins drivin'. Must be he's got boarders and is 
givin' 'em a ride." 

"There's another team comin' up the hill," the 
housewife remarked. 

"That's Henry Bligh and his adopted daughter," Aunt 
Jane announced after observing them a few moments. 



Midsummer in the Catskills 41 

grand false teeth. But he never looked neat enough to 
suit me. I remember tellin' some one in the post office 
one day that I did n't want his fingers round my face; 
and I turned, and there he was right behind me. But 
he just haw-hawed and took it in good part." 

"He made my teeth," Grandma said, "and I've had 
'em forty-six years." 

"Oh, Doc. could make teeth all right," the house- 
wife agreed. "Yes, sir, he could. He made some for 
George — that's my husband. One day George was 
bringin' home a load of hay, and he was drivin' along 
a side road with the hired man follerin' behind when the 
horses took fright at some boarders who'd climbed up 
in a tree. The horses shied, and load and all went 
tumbling down a kind of dugway eighty or ninety feet. 
They turned a complete summersault, and the load of 
hay landed on George bottom side up. The hired man 
thought George was killed, but when he got down there 
he heard him sayin' he was smotherin', and he dug a 
hole in the hay as quick as he could to give him air." 

"I s'pose them boarders helped," Aunt Jane re- 
marked. 

"No, no, help nothin'!" the wife exclaimed. "The 
hired man got him out alone. For a wonder George 
did n't have any bones broken, but he was bruised up 
like the mischief, and his teeth was smashed all to 
pieces. So he had Doc. Atkins make him a set of false 
ones." 

Grandma's thoughts now turned back to the subject 



42 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

we had been discussing previously. "There's still a 
Hardshell Baptist Church in the village," she said, 
"but they seldom have services nowadays. Once in a 
while, though, Dominie Lawson comes from down the 
valley and preaches. They say he's smart, and I've 
always been anxious to hear him, but it ain't been con- 
venient. Did you know that they never have no musical 
instruments in the Hardshell churches?" 

"David Buxton who died last spring was a good 
Baptist," Aunt Jane said. "He'd been sick a long time, 
and toward the end he was nothin' in the world but a 
skeleton. For quite a while before he died he was so 
afraid he'd say or do something wrong that he did n't 
dare read anything but his religious paper, Signs of the 
Times. He's taken that paper ever since he was a young 
man. It's full of sermons and old-fashioned religious 
experiences, and most people would find it dull, but it 
was a great comfort to David. I went to his funeral, 
and Dominie Lawson preached the funeral sermon. It 
must have been an hour long. There was no direct 
application to the occasion, but it was some predestina- 
tion stuff that rambled round and round gettin' no- 
where, I thought. The pall bearers sat there and slept, 
but I kept wide awake to see what the sermon was 
goin' to amount to. The words, 'He knows my sheep, he 
knows my voice,' come into it pretty often, and every time 
the dominie repeated 'em he looked right over at me." 

"He knew you was a lost sinner, Aunt Jane," the 
housewife remarked. 



Midsummer in the Catskills 43 

"Way back when David Buxton's father was alive," 
Grandma said, "the Hardshell church used to be 
crowded, and at the time of the yearly meetin' people 
would come from all around and have family picnics 
and stay three or four days. There'd be singin' and 
sermons then from morning till along late in the after- 
noon when folks had to go home to do the chores. At 
night every Baptist hereabouts had his house full of 
visitors. Oh, they had great times! Listening to the 
sermons all day put me in a fidget, but those old-time 
Baptists would have sat there a month, I guess, and 
enjoyed it." 

"I was at the Baptist Church once on a communion 
Sunday," Aunt Jane said, "but they did n't pass me 
the bread and the wine." 

"They would," Grandma said, "if only you'd been 
baptized by bein' immersed in a brook or bathtub or 
something. They used to have their batizin's in the 
crick. Do you recollect when they baptized Curtis 
Taylor? They'd just dipped him when Doc. Atkins 
called out, 'That's right — chuck him in ag'in.' I was 
there, and I heard him. He meant that considerable 
reformin' was necessary in Curt's case; and he didn't 
make any mistake about it either. Curt is quite a 
drinkin' feller, and he don't go to church nowhere 
now." 

"That same day Jennie Todd was baptized," the 
housewife observed, "and if I'd had anything to do 
about it they'd 'a' left her in till this time." 



44 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

"The last batizin' I went to," Aunt Jane said, "was 
in winter. They cut a hole in the ice, commencin' at 
the bank and makin' a channel perhaps fifteen feet long 
out to the middle of the stream. There was snow on 
the ground, and it was an awful cold day, but considera- 
ble of a crowd come to look on. Just one young woman 
was baptized. The dominie walked out in the water 
with her and soused her right down under out of sight. 
Then they went to the nearest house to change their 
duds. It's claimed that a person who's baptized in 
winter is miraculously protected from feelin' the cold, 
but I noticed that the girl wanted to get in the house as 
quick as she could, and the dominie was in about as big 
a hurry. Their clothes froze on 'em, and it's my opinion 
that if she'd known as much before as she did after- 
wards she'd have waited till warm weather." 

Aunt Jane now declared that she must go home, and a 
few minutes later she walked out of the yard carrying 
a pail full of spring water and a lesser receptacle full of 
buttermilk. About this time the farmer came to the 
piazza and announced that he had finished building a 
chicken house, but had neglected to provide it with any 
way to get in or out. So the housewife had to go with 
him to consider the problem, and I resumed my 
rambling. 

Notes. — The Catskills are attractive in their legendary lore, 
their picturesque scenery, their cool and healthful atmosphere, and 
their accessibility. Good hotels and boarding-places are found 
scattered all over the region, both on the heights and in the valleys, 



Midsummer in the Catskills 45 

and it is not difficult to satisfy one's wishes in the matter of expense 
as well as in surroundings. 

The chief gateways to this outlying group of the Appalachian 
system are Kingston and Catskill, both situated on the west bank 
of the Hudson. The mountains themselves begin to rise only a few 
miles from the river. A narrow-gauge railroad connects Catskill 
with the base of Catskill Mountain. You can make a quick ascent to 
the top of the mountain by an elevating railroad, but a more inter- 
esting way to go up is by a winding wagon road through the woods. 
Half way to the summit on this road is the scene of Rip Van Winkle's 
famous 20 years' sleep. Catskill Mountain has many wild cliffs, 
and on its eastern side is almost a sheer precipice. The view from 
its upper ledges over the plains between it and the Hudson is of 
unique beauty. Ten miles off, the river itself can be glimpsed, and 
on the far horizon are the blue ranges of the Berkshire Hills. The 
vicinity of the mountain abounds in pleasant walks and drives. 
Perhaps the most delightful of these excursions is the one through 
the narrow wooded ravine known as Kaaterskill Clove, with its 
limpid creek and dainty waterfalls. 

Persons having an ambition to scale Slide Mountain, the loftiest 
of the Catskill heights, can do so most readily by journeying on the 
railway that crosses the mountains from Kingston, and leaving the 
train at Big Indian. It is 1 1 miles from there to the summit. 

West of Kingston, 16 miles, the Ashokan Reservoir is nearing 
completion. This is to be a chief source of water-supply for New 
York City, 86 miles distant. The water will flow through a concrete 
acqueduct, 17 feet in diameter, which will pass under the Hudson at 
Storm King. The reservoir will convert a portion of the fair Esopus 
valley into a lake, 12 miles long and from I to 3 miles broad. About 
64 miles of highway must be discontinued, 7 villages abandoned, 
and the bodies moved from 32 cemeteries. The main dam rests on 
a foundation sunk 200 feet below the level of Esopus Creek and the 
dam rises 200 feet above the creek. A macadam boulevard is to 
encircle the lake. It will be lined with shade trees, and lighted by 



46 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

electricity at night. The total cost of the undertaking will be 
£250,000,000. 

Automobile routes go westward into the Catskills from Kingston, 
Saugerties, and Catskill. Good dirt roads are the rule, but they are 
often narrow, winding, and steep. 

In literature the individuality of the mountains is best set forth 
in the writings of John Burroughs, who was born at Roxbury in the 
westerly portion. Roxbury was also the birthplace of Jay Gould. 

West of the mountains, on Otsego Lake, is Cooperstown, famous 
as the home and burial-place of J. Fennimore Cooper. The site of 
the old Cooper mansion is marked by a statue of an Indian hunter. 

South of the Catskills, 6 miles west of New Paltz, is the famous 
resort of Lake Mohonk, near the summit of Sky Top, 1,550 feet 
high, one of the Shawangunk Mountains. Here are held notable 
annual conferences concerning the World's Peace and the welfare 
of the Indians. Lake Mohonk can be easily reached from Newburg 
or Kingston over good dirt and macadam roads. The great hotel 
at Lake Mohonk, and the hotels at Lake Minnewaska, 6 miles 
south, are managed on "a strictly temperate plan," and "visitors 
are not expected to arrive or depart on the Sabbath." The charm 
of the scenery in the region consists largely in the attractive mixture 
of the wild and gentle. 



Ill 



THE HEART OF THE HUDSON HIGHLANDS 

FOR a distance of twenty miles, from Cornwall on 
the north to Peekskill on the south, the broad 
current of the Hudson twists and turns among 
the mountains. Where the river enters this realm of 
rugged peaks are the two opposing heights of Storm 
King and Breakneck Mountain, forming the Northern 
Gate of the Highlands. Where the river escapes into 
the milder region beyond Peekskill is the Southern Gate 
guarded by the Dunderberg on the west shore, and the 
Spitzenberg Mountains opposite. Up and down the 
stream the great river steamers plough their way, and 
the canal-boat tows toil back and forth, and there are 
frequent motor boats plying in the neighborhood of the 
towns, and now and then one sees a steam yacht, or, 
best of all, especially amid the wilder scenery, a slow, 
old sailing vessel dependent wholly on the vagaries of 
the winds. 

Hugging close to either shore for nearly the whole 
distance through the Highlands is a railroad, and to get 
a foothold, even at the water's edge, it has often been 
necessary to blast out a terrace at the base of the crags, 
or to open a way through some outjutting ridge by 
cutting down from the top or by tunnelling. The 



48 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

thunder of the trains along the iron rails comes to the 
ear almost unceasingly, the air is apt to be much 
dimmed by the smoke that pours forth from the en- 
gines, and you are constantly reminded that the valley 
is a great commercial highway. 

Perhaps of all the bordering mountains Storm King 
is the best known. Its abruptness and comparative 
isolation make it particularly impressive. To some the 
name seems rather sentimental, but to most it is in 
keeping with the mountain's size and character, and 
they would not have it replaced with the older cog- 
nomen of Butter Hill. "A pretty big lump of butter," 
one of the long-time residents of the vicinity commented 
to me, "but it really does have the shape of a lump of 
butter if you see it from some points of view." 

He called my attention to the sister height across the 
stream, and said: "That's another big bunch of rocks. 
They say an Indian fell down the cliffs there once and 
broke his neck, and so they call it Breakneck Moun- 
tain." 

As one continues southward the more important 
mountains are Bull Hill, Crow Nest, Sugar Loaf, An- 
thony's Nose, Bear Hill, and the Dunderberg, all steep 
and ponderous, and with many a bare, gray shoulder 
of rock showing through the foliage. About half way 
between the northern and southern gates is West Point 
with its magnificent, castle-like buildings nestling amid 
the trees near the cliff-bordered river and having a 
background of forested ridges. 



The Heart of the Hudson Highlands 49 

Most of these features of the region are familiar to 
whoever has journeyed up and down the river, but I 
wanted to see something of life and nature beyond the 
immediate borders of the stream. On the map, back 
among the mountains, I had found a place called 
Doodletown, and I determined to make its acquain- 
tance, fully persuaded that a place with such a name 
and in such a situation was worth investigating. I made 
a guess at what was the nearest railroad station, and 
there I left the train one sunny October morning. A 
short climb up a steep hill took me into a tiny village 
in a wooded glen, where one of the natives gave me 
detailed directions so that the crooks and partings of 
the roads between there and Doodletown should not 
puzzle and take me astray. While we were talking, a 
shock-headed country boy about fourteen years old 
sat on a store porch close by. He looked straight ahead 
and was apparently meditating, wholly oblivious of 
what was going on around him, but as I was resuming 
my walk he casually observed that he was going to 
Doodletown and would show me the way. So we went 
on together. 

I presently learned that my companion's name was 
Johnny Stotten. He was at first somewhat reticent, but 
gradually became voluble and confidential. "I'm 
goin' to be a boatman," he said. "I'll get a job on a 
brick barge, don't you know? This year I'm in school, 
but I'll be on the river next year. Some boys might 
not like handling bricks, but I've always worked from 



50 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

a kid up, and I don't think it'll be any harder than 
what I've had to do up here in the mountains. I help 
loading the wagons and sleds and driving the horses. 
Some of the cordwood sticks are so heavy I can't hardly 
lift 'em, and often we have to draw the wood from 
awful rocky places where it's right straight down 
almost, and the load nearly pushes the collars off the 
horses' heads. Once in a while there's an accident. A 
man near us was up in the woods sleddin', and he was 
walkin' side of the load drivin' when he stepped on a 
wet stick — you know how slippery that is. His feet 
went from under him, and the horses drug him quite 
a distance. Some of his ribs was broken and his 
shoulder, and he's been a cripple man ever since. 

"Do you see those dead trees up there on that slope? 
There used to be lots of highholes in them. A highhole 
is a bird with a big, long mouth. It's like a woodpecker, 
only larger. They're good to eat, and we used to shoot 
'em while they were around in the bushes after dog- 
wood and sumach berries. 

"Now we're passing along side of a little lake — High- 
land Lake, they call it. The water looks clear and nice, 
but it'll poison anyone who takes a drink. It makes 
your mouth itch and your face swell up. My brother 
drank some once, and when he came home we did n't 
know him. Oh! did n't he have a big face! There's 
lots of fish in the lake — black bass, perch, pickerel, and 
everything. Gorry! I don't know what is n't in there. 
We've eaten many a nice mess of 'em. 



The Heart of the Hudson Highlands 51 

"A battle was fought near here in the Revolutionary 
War — that's what they tell me. I like to hear about 
battles and I like to read history; but I don't like to 
read novels. They scare me so my hair stands up 
straight, and I don't know what to do. 

"There's a family of Arabians have got a camp off 
in the woods on this side road that leaves the main 
road here. The man goes around to the houses and 
tells fortunes. I guess he makes money because he's 
always dressed good when I seen him. He wanted to 
give an entertainment in the schoolhouse, but they 
would n't let him. One of the Doodletown boys went 
to the Arabians' camp, and the man took a half dollar 
and blew it into a dollar. The boy don't want to go 
there again. He says they are witches. I would n't 
want to see 'em do such things, and I don't believe they 
can. They have some kind of a scheme to fool you. 

"Way up on that mountain ahead of us a horse fell 
off the rocks last summer. It was a big white horse 
that was out to pasture, and it broke its back and 
busted a big hole in its head." 

At last we reached Doodletown up among the forest 
heights. It is a place of scattered homes, and these are 
dotted along on divergent roads that follow up various 
valleys between the big rocky ridges. Nowhere is there 
a village nucleus, and even the church, the schoolhouse, 
and the store are widely separated from each other, and 
none of them has more than a house or two in the im- 
mediate vicinity. The little white church stands at the 



52 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

junction of two roads, and close by was a great way- 
side pile of cordwood. This wood was indicative of the 
chief industry of the region. The forests, and not the 
diminutive fields or the few cattle, are the main support 
of the people. 

One of the dwellings that particularly attracted my 
attention was a shed-like structure scarcely high enough 
to stand up in. Roundabout the grass grew rank, and 
evidently was neither cut nor browsed off. The door 
was padlocked. On the end of the hut toward the road 
the window was open and several narrow strips of 
board had been nailed across in a manner to suggest a 
cage for savage beasts; and, sure enough, when we 
came opposite the house, several dogs leaped up on the 
inside, put their forepaws on the windowsill and barked 
at us viciously. 

"Hello, Danny," Johnny said. 

"Who are you speaking to?" I asked. 

"Well," Johnny said, "the man who lives there looks 
just like one of his dogs, and I can't tell whether I see 
Danny or the tarrier at the window; so I say 'hello' 
anyway when I go past. Danny calls the dogs his 
children. He lives there alone with 'em, and when he 
goes off to work he locks 'em in. I think they get their 
noses in every bit of food he eats." 

I inquired of Johnny where I could find a lodging- 
place, and he mentioned several homes including his 
own. It was easier to continue with the friend I already 
had than to seek refuge among entire strangers, and 




Going a- mil king 



The Heart of the Hudson Highlands 53 

we went on up one of the valleys to the last house on 
the winding mountain road. The dwelling was a shape- 
less, uncertain structure, the older portion of which 
had at some time been painted yellow. At the front 
door was a little porch with a broken floor, and the 
porch posts were so decayed at the base that they 
threatened to let the patched and twisted roof down 
altogether. On the hard-trodden earth round about 
was a great variety of household furniture — chairs and 
rugs, pieces of stovepipe, etc. The boy's mother ap- 
peared at the door, towsled and grimy-handed and 
somewhat disconcerted by the advent of a stranger. 
She was in the midst of housecleaning, but I might 
stay if I would be satisfied with the accommodations 
they could furnish. 

So I sat down in ope of the chairs in the yard where I 
could look forth at the mountains aglow in the sunshine 
with their autumn tints of scarlet and gold. Johnny 
and a younger brother, Gerald, and a still smaller sister 
started a game of ball at one side of the house amid the 
weeds and upthrusting boulders. For clubs they used 
woodpile sticks, and their ball was a little wad of cloth 
wound about with string. There was a good deal of 
laughter in their play, and a good deal of scolding, dis- 
puting, and bluffing. They could not bat the ball far 
without its going into the brush or trees or over a 
tumble-down stone wall. Often they knocked around 
some hard, green, globular fruit that strewed the ground 
under one of the yard trees. I asked what the green 



54 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

balls were, and Gerald said: "We call 'em mock 
oranges, but they hain't. When they get dry they smell 
awful pretty and we like to put 'em in the bureau 
drawers where we keep our clothes." 

Close by the picket gate that gave entrance to the 
yard was a big dead cherry tree with its gauntness 
almost hidden by grapevines. The leafage on the vines 
was still green, and here and there I could catch 
glimpses of pendant purple clusters of grapes. Pres- 
ently Johnny went and stood by the roadside surveying 
the tangle of vines up above. "I guess I'll have to get 
some of them grapes," he said to me. "There's grapes 
in the woods, too — summer grapes and frost grapes. 
The summer grapes grow around the swamps. They 
are big and sweet, and we pick and do them down. If 
I'm where the frost grapes are after they are ripe I eat 
'em right out of hand." 

Johnny now sat down and took off his shoes, then 
gripped the tree and scuffled upward till he was among 
the branches. Soon the grapeskins began to drop, and 
Gerald observed this evidence of feasting with watering 
mouth. "Give us a bunch, Johnny," he called. 

But Johnny said nothing, and the grapeskins con- 
tinued to fall with irritating profusion. Gerald repeated 
his request and threw one of the hard green mock 
oranges up at Johnny as an inducement to comply. 
When this did not produce the desired result the bom- 
bardment of appeals and missiles became continuous. 
The boy in the tree was well protected by vines, and 



The Heart of the Hudson Highlands 55 

at first he was not especially disturbed. But after a 
while he was hit. Then he protested loudly and told his 
brother he would come down and kill him. 

"Chuck us a bunch, and I won't bother you," 
Gerald said. 

Just then Lizzie, a grown-up sister, came out to the 
road and addressing Gerald said: "S'pos'n' you made 
Johnny fall out of the tree. I'll go right in and tell 
mama of you." 

So he threw a few mock oranges at her, which made 
her skip and screech. Some of them flew in my direc- 
tion. "Stop it, Gerald!" she cried. "You'll hit that 
man! You think you're awful cunning, but you just 
wait till papa comes home!" 

"Mama!" she called, as she scurried into the house, 
"Johnny's in the grape tree and Gerald's pelting him." 

Pretty soon she reappeared. "Johnny," she called, 
"come down and lick him. Come down and chase him 
till you ketch him." 

After a while Mrs. Stotten came out and looked up 
into the tree. "Where are yer, Johnny?" she said. 
"Why don't you get that man some of those grapes? 
Pick some nice bunches, and I'll put 'em in a dish." 

She went back and got a pan and caught the bunches 
as he tossed them down. "They all smash," she said 
depricatingly. 

"Go git a apron," Johnny said. 

She brought the apron and holding it well spread 
out said: "Let's have some nice big ones, Johnny. 



56 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

That's it. Well, now, Johnny, get a few more bunches, 
and then hurry down. You've got to go to the store. 
I've been pokin' you to go all the afternoon." 

"I'll be right down," Johnny responded. 

"It begins to get cool," Mrs. Stotten said to me. 
"Perhaps you'd be more comfortable sitting in the 
parlor. The men'll get home soon, and they'll be com- 
pany for you." 

I went in and she brought me some grapes in a glass 
dish. Most of them were intact, and the clusters were 
large, though the individual grapes were small. While 
I sat by the open window eating them the little girl 
approached shyly outside and put an apple on the sill 
for me, and then hastily and silently departed. 

Mrs. Stotten presently called again to Johnny who 
still lingered in the tree. "I'm coming," he said reas- 
suringly; but not until he had been called once or 
twice more did he descend. Then he leisurely put on his 
shoes and went off down the road to do the errand at 
the store. 

Mrs. Stotten now began supper preparations by 
going to where a few long sticks lay by the wayside 
and cutting enough into firewood to make an armful. 
She wielded the ax with an effective vigor that was 
plainly the result of much practice. About this time 
the man of the house arrived with Luther, his oldest 
son. They sat down in the parlor with me, and Mr. 
Stotten said: "You some resemble a man named 
Willetts who comes up here from New York to paint 



The Heart of the Hudson Highlands 57 

pictures. He's the greatest mountain runner I ever 
seen in my life. That feller goes around our rough 
roads and woods just for pleasure. Oh, gracious sakes, 
yes!" 

While Mr. Stotten talked he smoked his pipe, and 
from time to time he relieved himself of his surplus 
saliva. There was a carpet on the floor, but it was so 
cut as to leave a strip of painted floorboards exposed 
along the borders of the room, and it was this strip of 
flooring that received his expectorations. 

"I heard a good many guns goin' today," he con- 
tinued. "There's fine hunting here. I don't s'pose 
any mountains have more game in 'em than these. 
You see, for a long distance back westerly it's mostly 
wilderness with very few inhabitants. We have any 
amount of red and gray foxes, and once in a while a 
link or a catamount, and sometimes a black bear travels 
through. Probably those bigger wild animals wander 
here from the mountainous country in Pennsylvanny. 
My wife's brother come across one of those Rocky 
Mountain wildcats when he was out with his dog hunt- 
ing not long ago. The wildcat dumb a tree, and it 
made a spring for him just as he shot at it. Down it 
come close to him, and if it had n't been hit so bad 
it was about at its last kicks it would have killed him, 
dog and all. A wildcat is a nasty beast when it comes 
to fighting. It has a way of layin' on its back and 
scratchin' a dog all to pieces. 

"This is my native region, but I've worked a good 



58 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

deal on boats up and down the Hudson and along the 
coast. One while I worked on a New Haven oyster 
boat, and what feasts I had then! I can eat oysters till 
I look like 'em — eat 'em raw right out of the shell. 
Those oysters were big — they were old bouncers. 

"That puts me in mind of a girl who lived back here 
in the mountains. Her home was in what is called 
Burke's Holler over t'other side of Bull Hill. A feller 
named Henry Newell, who used to run around with her 
a good deal, invited her to go with him to West P'int 
where there was to be some doin's. This 'ere girl 
had n't never seen the river before, and when a steam- 
boat hove in sight she grabbed Henry by the arm and 
says, 'Look a' there! What's that comin' up the river?" 

"'That's a steamboat,' Henry says. 

'"How old is that steamboat?' she asked. 

'"I s'pose twelve or fourteen years,' Henry says. 

"'Well, my gracious!' the girl says, if she grows till 
she's twenty won't she be a bouncer!' 

"Henry made a mistake giving her that outing. 
After seein' how the young fellers at West P'int dressed 
and behaved she concluded he wa'n't smart enough for 
her. He was expectin' they'd be goin' to the dominie 
soon to get j'ined together, but she dropped him. That 
was years ago, but he won't stand any jokin' on the 
subject even now. I met him with his team on the 
road lately and made some pleasant remark about the 
age of steamboats and the like o' that, and he was 
goin' to knock my brains out with a cordwood stick. 




Skinning the coon 



The Heart of the Hudson Highlands 59 

"That girl gives you a fair idea of the ignorance of 
some of the people in these parts of the world. I s'pose 
there's folks back here who've lived to a terrible age 
and never seen New York. One day I met a well-to-do 
man I knew in a village where there was a little fruit 
and candy store and invited him to have an ice-cream 
with me at my expense. 

"He hung back. 'I don't know whether I'd like it,' 
he said. 

"But I insisted on to him, and we went into the 
little store and had some. 'Well, John, that's pretty 
good, ain't it?' he says, when we finished. 

"He was seventy years old, and in his hull life had 
never tasted ice-cream before. The fact is he was that 
infernal stingy he would n't buy it even if he 
wanted it. 

"Another old man — his name was Courtlandt Powers 
— went down to New York for the first time. When he 
come back we asked him how it looked. He said he 
thought it was quite a smart place, but he felt no satis- 
faction in going there because the houses were so blame 
thick he could n't see anything." 

I mentioned the salute Johnny and I had received 
from the dogs in the little hut down the road. 

"Yes," Mr. Stotten said, "Danny is quite a dog 
fancier. He had seven or eight dogs livin' there with 
him one while. But he got sick, and the board of 
health come up and decided it would improve the 
premises and his chances of getting well to dispose 



60 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

of the dogs. They sent word for me to see that the 
dogs was all shot. I went there, and Danny made a 
great fuss. He said there was no religion in dog- 
shooting, and no man who was a man would do such 
a thing — the man who'd drag away a poor dog and kill 
it must have a heart of stone. I told him I had my 
orders, but he would n't let me shoot only three. 

"Danny's a good worker. The worst you can say 
about him is that he's an opium-eater. He'll take a 
two-ounce bottle of laudanum and put it to his mouth 
and drink it right off", and he has to have the opium or 
he'd die. If he goes without it any length of time he'll 
lay right in fits and froth at the mouth like a mad dog 
till he gets it. I knew a woman who used opium. She 
lived to be wonderful old, but in her last years she was 
all withered and dried up so there was nothing of her. 
When she did n't have opium she'd be in such distress 
you would n't think she'd live from one minute to 
another, but when she got some again she'd be up in- 
side of quarter of an hour and around as lively as a 
cricket. Luther, you remember her. That was Jim 
Beasley's wife — mother to Mandy and Molly." 

Supper was now announced, and Mr. Stotten knocked 
the ashes out of his pipe, and Luther threw away the 
stub of a cigaret he had been puffing, and we adjourned 
to the dining-room. The room was small, and with its 
table, chairs, stove, and other furniture was much 
crowded. The food was bountiful, and appetites were 
hearty, and huge mouthfuls conveyed on the knife 



The Heart of the Hudson Highlands 61 

blades disappeared with remarkable rapidity. The 
place of honor at the table was occupied by a white- 
haired patriarch whom Mr. Stotten addressed as 
Daddy, and whom the children called Grampy. "He's 
past eighty years old," Mr. Stotten said to me, "and 
just as well as he ever was. You never had a doctor to 
you in your life, did you Daddy?" 

"Wunst," the veteran said. 

"But I'll warrant you wa'n't so wonderful serious 
sick even if you did have the doctor," Mr. Stotten de- 
clared, and he turned to me and added, "I wish my 
health was as good as his." 

"Is that a dog under the table stepping on my feet?" 
Luther said. 

Lizzie, who was bringing in a freshly-filled dish of 
potato and some apple sauce from the little leanto 
kitchen, set the things on the table, and investigated 
underneath. "No, it's a cat," she announced. 

One of the delicacies in the bill of fare was honey. 
The comb that contained it was in irregular pieces and 
the cells were a good deal broken. "We got that honey 
from over in the woods a few days ago," Mr. Stotten 
explained. "I watched some bees flying away from a 
bunch of sumachs and saw the direction they took, and 
I follered to where they went into a hole in the rocks. 
We put sulphur in dry rags and made a smudge. That 
killed most of 'em, though some people say that bees 
killed that way come to after a few hours. It was a 
bad place to get at. Luther crawled down in head first, 



62 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

and I held onto him by the seat of his pants. He cut 
the honey loose and then hooked onto it with a crotched 
stick and drew it out. We could n't help its dragging 
on the rock, so there's some grit into it. But we got 
more honey than I ever got out of any bee tree I've 
cut. Luther was stung quite a little about his hands, 
and they swelled up like cushions. Will you have some 
more potato? This has been a poor year for raisin' 
potatoes here. We planted four barrels, but I doubt if 
we'll git that many. We had a fair hay crop. Johnny 
and Gerald can both swing a scythe now, and they're 
quite a help. A machine is not much use here, the 
fields are so small, and there's so many rocks stickin' 
up, and so many swampy spots." 

Johnny returned from the store just then. He 
sidled up to his mother rubbing his stomach and said: 
"I don't feel good. Will some one else milk for me?" 

"Yes, I will," she responded. 

Then Gerald wanted some one to milk for him, not 
because he did n't feel well, but because he had filled 
the woodbox and he thought he had done his share of 
work. His plea was not successful, and the evening 
tasks were done somehow. Even the invalid Johnny 
did not escape scot-free, for when it was announced that 
the horse had strayed off down the road he was obliged 
to go out and pursue it in the thickening gloom of the 
evening. 

I had gone back to the parlor. In the center of the 
room was a little stand with a big shabby family Bible 



The Heart of the Hudson Highlands 63 

on it, and in one corner was a marble topped table, the 
edge of which had been beautified by a band of home- 
applied bronze. The other furniture included several 
modern easy chairs, two attractive rugs, a stove, and 
a little organ. On the corner table was an ornate lamp 
of huge dimensions. It was such a lamp as seldom 
makes an advent into as humble a home except as the 
result of a wedding, and how it got there I could not 
imagine. But Mrs. Stotten came in and lighted it and 
with some pride informed me she had earned it acting 
as an agent in selling soap, coffee, tea, witch-hazel, and 
similar things in the neighborhood. "Every time I sell 
ten dollars' worth," she said, "I send on the money, 
and get as pay for my work something nice for my 
rooms. You can furnish your whole house. I can sell 
ten dollars worth in a day pretty near. I just hitch up 
the horse and drive around. Most everyone will take 
off me when I go myself. If I send the children they 
won't do as well. I only go in summer when money's 
plenty, and I sell two or three ten dollar lots in a season. 
That cuckoo clock on the wall is one of the things I got. 
I don't always take the trouble to wind it, and I see 
it ain't going, but I'll start it and you can hear it 
strike." 

She wound it up and resumed her seat, and pretty 
soon it struck eleven, and its melodious notes seemed 
to sufficiently atone for the fact that it was four or five 
hours out of the way. While Mrs. Stotten and I were 
talking the little girl came in and climbed into her 



64 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

mother's lap, and began to tell about playing ball that 
afternoon. "I made three runs," she announced. 

"Well I bet yer," the mother commented. "This is 
the baby," she added to me. "She's seven years old, 
and now it's her bedtime." 

She went away with the little girl, and soon after- 
ward Johnny looked in at the parlor door and said: 
"Pop says for you to come out in the other room where 
there's a fire. We ain't got the stovepipe up in here 
yet. There's a fireplace in back of that stove, but it's 
boarded up and we don't use it. In the summer we 
hear the young swallows holler in there. Once I took 
away the board and found one of the big swallows. I 
made a grab and caught him. He had little black eyes. 
I carried him outdoors and let him go. I like to see 
the swallows fly." 

When I entered the dining-room Mr. Stotten was 
leaning over the lamp that was on the table lighting 
his pipe at the top of the chimney. Luther was pre- 
paring to write a letter, but was having difficulty in 
finding paper. A week ago he had a box full, and now 
as he shook the box and looked into it ruefully he dis- 
covered only one lone envelope. "Who uses my paper 
like that?" he said. "Gorry! I wish they'd leave some- 
thing alone. I s'pose if I'd waited another day that 
envelope would have been gone, too." 

However, with his mother's help, he was at last 
furnished with writing materials. "Liz," he said, as 
he settled down to start his letter, "you go and get me 



The Heart of the Hudson Highlands 65 

some water to drink. The pail in the. back room is 
empty." 

They got their water from a well in front of the house 
of their nearest neighbor. 

"No, I don't want to go," Liz said. "I'm afraid." 

"Oh, go on," Luther urged. 

"No," Liz persisted. 

"I'll go with you," Mrs. Stotten said. "I can't keep 
the Old Boy away from you, but I guess I can protect 
you from the dark." 

So Liz got the pail and the two went forth into the 
night. 

"This region has been settled a long, long time," 
Mr. Stotten said. "There were people living here be- 
fore the Revolutionary War, and the British soldiers 
who marched back and forth through the mountain 
called them the Yankee Doodle Boys. That's the way 
the name of Doodletown started. Once there was a 
big fight between the Hessians and the Americans down 
by Highland Lake. Oh! it was a bloody battle. Our 
men slaughtered them Hessians right and left, and after 
the fight ended they threw the dead into the lake. There 
was so many they say a person could walk across on 
those dead bodies. The water is eighty to ninety feet 
deep anywhere you might to measure it, and in one 
place they claim there ain't no bottom at all. A while 
ago a young feller who was fishing on the lake raised 
a body with his hook. But he was so scairt when he 
brought the dead man to the surface that he took out 



66 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

his hook and let the body sink. Then he could n't 
get it again. It had on a uniform of gray cloth with 
two rows of brass buttons down the front, and a yaller 
stripe across the shoulders, and a yaller band around 
the sleeves. The body itself wa'n't decayed, but was 
petrified just like a clay man. Whether that's true or 
not he always told it straight. I've heard him tell it 
myself as many as half a dozen times. Yes, it's likely 
there's lots of dead men down in that lake. 

"The water in it is bad. I'll guarantee that whoever 
drinks it will have trouble. There used to be a big ice- 
house by the lake, and in the winter three hundred men 
would be working to fill it. They drank the water, and 
they all had sore lips and a sore mouth. Then they 
got quills for to suck through, but it still made 'em 
have sore tongues and sore throats." 

"A great many years ago," Mrs. Stotten said, "one 
of my relations — Hiram Holley, his name was — found 
a skull on that battlefield, and he took it home. Ole 
Mis Holley kept it in her bedroom on the bureau as a 
kind of ornament. Gracious sake! what an ugly thing 
it must have been. I don't think I'd want it on my 
bureau lookin' at me. Once my mother, when she was 
a girl, went visitin' the Holleys for a few days, and they 
put her in that bedroom to sleep. But she would n't 
stay in there, and I guess I would n't either." 

"That puts me in mind of a story I heared a feller 
tell down in Jersey," Mr. Stotten said. "Two men 
was workin' in a cemetery, and in their talkin' they 




Ready to start after partridges 



The Heart of the Hudson Highlands 67 

begun to brag of how bold they were. 'I'd dare go 
anywhere the darkest night that ever was,' says one. 

"'Well,' says the other, 'I'll bet you wouldn't go 
in that vault over there at midnight and pick up a 
dead man's skull and bring it out.' 

"Til bet you a gallon of rum I'll do it this very 
night,' says the first man. 

"So about midnight he went to the tomb. The 
other feller had got there first and was hiding inside 
intending to give his friend a scare. The man walked 
in and felt around until he got hold of a skull, when the 
other feller says, 'Let that alone. That's my skull.' 

"'Well, if that's yours, I don't want it,' the feller 
says. 'I'll find another.' 

"After a little search he found one, and the other 
feller hollers out, 'Let that alone. That's my skull.' 

"'But they can't both be yours,' the feller says. 
'There's only one man talkin'! I'm goin' to have this 
anyhow.' 

"So out he walked with it, and he won the bet." 

Luther had now finished writing, and he brought 
out a rattlesnake skin to show me. The live beast had 
been over five feet long, and on the end of the tail were 
ten rattles and a button. "I come across him right in 
the middle of the road," Luther said, "and when I 
threw a stone at him he showed fight and rattled and 
struck at me. Rattlesnakes have tushes that are just 
like cat's claws, and they open up their mouth wide 
and hack at you." 



68 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

"There used to be a man who had a saloon down by 
the river," Mr. Stotten said. "Wildcat Bill they called 
him, and he was a wildcat, too. He kep' some snakes 
there. I did n't know he had the devilish things till 
one day I was in the saloon and an Irishman come in 
and says, 'Can I get some beer here?' 

"'Sure thing,' says Bill. 'I got beer that would 
make a dead man alive, and a live man dead.' 

"He filled a glass and put it on the counter and then 
reached underneath and got a great big rattlesnake 
and stretched it beside the glass. When the Irishman 
saw that snake he gave one frightened whoop and 
dashed out of the door. Wildcat Bill was too fond of 
playing those little jokes with his snakes. His saloon 
did n't prosper, and he gave up the business." 

Johnny was sitting with a dog in his lap, and he 
mentioned that last summer the dog had been bitten 
by a rattlesnake. "Yes," Mr. Stotten said, "and for 
two or three days afterward, if he heard a grasshopper 
or any little noise along the way, he'd imagine 'twas a 
rattler, and he'd almost jump out of his skin. I laughed 
at him till I had a pain in the side. I put kerosene on 
his bite — put it on good and plenty. That kills the 
p'isen right on the spot — kills it in a jiffy as dead as 
a stone 

"The biggest rattlesnake I ever killed had only five 
rattles," Luther observed, "but I seen one another 
feller killed that had twenty-seven. They claim the 
first button comes when the snake is three years old 



The Heart of the Hudson Highlands 69 

and after that one rattle grows every year, but the 
snake with twenty-seven was n't large. I believe 
snakes are a good deal like people, and shrink up when 
they get old." 

"Pop come near being bitten by a copperhead once," 
Johnny said. "It fastened onto his pantleg, and he 
was dragging it along when I told him of it." 

"I tell you, a copperhead is a bad animal to have 
hold of you," Mr. Stotten affirmed. "I don't want one 
to draw any blood on me." 

"But a rattlesnake is ten times more p'isener," 
Luther commented. 

"You's think that in a wooded country like this 
there'd be considerable timber good for building pur- 
poses," Mr. Stotten said, "but we have to buy all our 
lumber. There ain't a sawmill in the region. There 
used to be plenty in the olden time, and you can still 
find the places where they stood, and the ruins of their 
dams. The mountains are kep' cut off in supplying 
cordwood to the brickyards, and we manage to get it 
all no matter where it grows. If the slopes are too steep 
for a team, we pitch the wood down or make gutters 
and slide it down. 

"Daddy," he said, raising his voice and addressing 
the old man, who was sitting by the stone in the leanto 
kitchen, "you can remember, before coal was common, 
when they tuck most all the wood from here to New 
York to use for kindlings and firewood in the house- 
stoves." 



jo Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

"Oh, good gracious, yes!" the patriarch said. 

"Some curious stories are told about what happened 
through here in the early days," Mr. Stotten said. 
'There was Cap'n Blauvell, for instance. He was 
a-sailin' his sloop down near Haverstraw one dark 
night, when his crew heard some one holler to him 
three times — 'Hello! Jake Blauvell.' He anchored and 
went ashore in a boat, and after a while he come back. 
They sailed on down to New York, discharged the 
cargo, and returned to Haverstraw, and there the 
cap'n laid up his sloop. He did n't make any more 
voyages, and from that time off he was a terrible rich 
man. Whoever it was that called to him must have 
told him where treasure was buried. They calculate 
he dug it up somewhere on the beach here by Iona 
Island. It had been buried by Captain Kidd, I suppose. 
Kidd's vessel was chased up here one time by a govern- 
ment ship. When he saw he could n't escape, he 
scuttled his ship and went ashore in a boat that was 
just loaded with gold and silver. In the rocks up above 
West P'int there's what is called Kidd's Cave. They 
say a skeleton of a man was found in it and quite some 
treasure, too, and they think Captain Kidd must have 
crawled in there and died. 

"I understand there's treasure right on the United 
States grounds at West P'int. In 1872 three men 
offered three thousand dollars for the privilege of 
digging under the corner of the government barn there. 
I know that to be a fact, and it made quite an excite- 



The Heart of the Hudson Highlands 71 

ment in the papers at the time. But the government 
would n't let 'em dig. The men were Mart and Sam 
Conklin and Josiah Hunter. Mart, he told me himself 
that as near as he could calculate by an instrument 
they used for discovering precious metals, a hogshead 
half full of gold and silver was buried right there. I 
knowed Mart well, but 'tain't likely he'd have told me 
if he had n't had a little rum in. 

"Did you ever hear tell of an instrument that would 
locate treasure? I'd almost take my oath they used 
a witch-hazel crotch. That boy there," he said, indi- 
cating Luther, "can take a witch-hazel limb and find 
a ten cent piece anywhere. A peach limb does just as 
well, and there's a feller down at Jones P'int uses 
basswood in preference to either. You grip the end of 
a branch in each hand so the crotch p'ints straight up, 
and when you come to where you are over money or 
a spring of water, it tips outward and down. But with 
me it draws right back to my body. That shows I'm 
pretty well charged with electricity. Anyhow, I can't 
locate less than eight or ten dollars. But I've been 
thinkin' lately that I always had a big silver watch in 
my pocket. Perhaps it was that made the difference. 

"They say those three men dug up a pot of money 
out here in Orange County near Galloway's Tavern. 
I did n't see the pot, but I've seen the cover. It lay 
there at Turner's Station on the stoop a long time, and 
it was kind of a flat stone about three inches thick and 
eighteen across that looked as if it had been knocked 



72 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

with a hammer and made pretty near round. Four 
columns of letters was cut into it, but no one could read 
'em. I've seen that cover I s'pose a dozen times. 

"On one of our mountains there's some strange 
letters cut into a rock. They're in two rows, and one 
row is twelve feet long, and the other nearly as long. 
The letters are formed by making nicks in the rock 
with a stone chisel. The nicks are not deep, and they 
are a little distance apart. You can only see 'em one 
time in the day, when the sun shines ag'in' the rock in 
the afternoon. The rock is very difficult to find. Years 
ago two boys named Horace Flemming and Henry 
Keyser come across it, and when they left the place 
they never dremp but that they could go right back any 
time they pleased. But them boys could n't find that 
rock ag'in, though they hunted and hunted and hunted. 
Other people could n't either, or if they did they 
could n't go back to it. Those boys noticed that they 
could see Flemming's house as they looked down from 
the lettered rock on the mountain top. But from the 
house the mountain could n't be seen on account of a 
knoll between. Seems as if there was a kind of en- 
chantment about the spot. Once a clairvoyant woman 
was taken up there on the mountain to see what she 
could discover, but she could n't do anything. She 
had fits and fainted away and everything else, and she 
said all sorts of spirits was up there follerin' her. 

"It's supposed that the letters chipped on that rock 
tell where the Long Tinker's silver mine is on Black 



The Heart of the Hudson Highlands 73 

Mountain. That mine was worked by the Indians 
when the white men first come to this country. Finally 
an Italian come into the mountains here, and he was 
terrible tall and a tinker by trade, so he was knowed 
as the Long Tinker. The Indians asked him if he 
could n't find any better business than that for makin' 
a livin,' and he told 'em, 'No.' Then they tuck and 
showed him this silver mine. After working it for a 
good while and getting all the silver he wanted he went 
back to Italy with his wealth. In the meantime the 
Indians had cleared out, and no one else knew anything 
about where the mine was until it was discovered by 
Cap'n Waldron and Alexander Bulson. While hunting 
on Black Mountain they come to a brush fence, and 
forced their way through it and found three beaten 
paths. They followed one path, and it led to a spot 
where the long tinker had made charcoal for to melt 
his ore, and among the weeds and bushes was a little 
forge and crucible. They comeback and follered an- 
other of the paths, and it went down a hill to where the 
tinker had dumped cinders in a brook. The third path 
tuck 'em to the mine, the mouth of which was corked 
up with a lot of wood that had been stuffed into it. 
They tried to pull some of the wood out, but it was 
rotten and would n't hold together. The guns they 
carried were a long old-fashioned flintlock sort in com- 
mon use at that time, called buccaneer guns; and they 
reached in as far as they could with 'em and did n't 
strike no end to the hole. Right at the edge of the 



74 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

opening was a shelf cut out of the rock, and on it was 
a lot of ore. They picked up some and started back 
down the mountain. By and by Bulson throwed his 
ore away. He said he had stone enough on his land at 
home without lugging on any more. But Cap'n 
Waldron tuck hisn on board his packet sloop, and there 
he kep' it two or three years. You see, neither he nor 
Bulson knew anything about the Long Tinker and they 
did n't bother to investigate further. One day a young 
feller who'd come aboard the cap 'n's packet and was 
lookin' around happened to notice that ore from Black 
Mountain and he asked what it was. 

'"I don't know,' says the cap'n. 'I found it in the 
mountain in an old mine hole.' 

'"Can I take it and have it tested?' the feller asks. 

"'Yes, take it and welcome,' says the cap'n, and he 
never made any inquiry what the feller's name was or 
where he could find him. 

"He'd pretty near forgot all about the matter when 
a few months later that feller spoke to him on a street 
in New York, and said the ore was the richest of blue 
silver and wanted to know where the mine was located. 
They come up here to the mountains and went to 
hunting for it. But they could n't find it, and then 
they called on Alexander Bulson and asked him if he 
knew where it was. 'By my life!' said he, 'I could go 
there the darkest night that ever blowed. I could find 
the way blindfolded.' 

"The next morning all three started out, and they 



The Heart of the Hudson Highlands 75 

hunted till they had to give it up; and that mine hain't 
been found since. But once a feller was up on Black 
Mountain lookin' for sheep, and something happened 
to him. What it was he never would tell, except that 
he went into a trance and when he come to himself he 
was close by the mine. Yet he would n't go back 
there, nor tell others how to go. Long afterward, when 
he was on his death bed, they went and tried to get him 
to tell, and they thought he would n't refuse them, 
but he did." 

About the time this tale was finished Luther came 
in from the hall with a hunting-coat on, carrying a gun 
and a lantern. "Come boys," he said to the dogs, and 
they roused up and leaped about him eagerly. "I'm 
goin' coon-hunting," he explained, and he lighted a 
cigaret and departed. 

"I've give up hunting coons myself," Mr. Stotten 
said. "The last time I went I got so dead tired I 
vowed I'd never go again. Steve Burrows went with 
me. Perhaps you've heard of him. He's one of the 
biggest politicianers anywhere in this region. Yes, 
he's in politics head over heels. A coon will go up a 
tree after the dogs have run it pretty tight, and then 
you generally have a chance to shoot it; but Steve and 
I run one an hour and then it went into a holler tree, 
and as we did n't have no ax with us we had to give up 
tryin' to get that coon. I guess we travelled thirty 
miles that night, and then we laid in the woods all day 
afterward. The next night we got on the trail of a 



76 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

wildcat. He'd run for a while and climb a tree, and 
before we'd get near enough to shoot he'd jump down 
and run again. Finally we tuck the dogs off the track. 
If we had n't they'd be follering that wildcat still. 
Later the dogs got after some coons, and they treed 
'em, and pretty soon we had 'em. There was four. 
That satisfied us and we started for home. By the 
time we got there we was tired out and half starved 
out, too." 

Everyone had gone to bed but Mr. Stotten and I, 
and now I retired also. About an hour later I was 
aroused by voices calling my name and by a thumping 
on my door. Then Mr. Stotten and Luther came into 
my room. The latter carried his lantern and a coon 
he had shot. "The dogs found it in a pile of wood that 
had upsot," said he, "and they scared it out and it ran 
along an old woodroad. Why the deuce it did n't 
go up the timber I don't know, but it kep' on till it 
come to a slippery, slanting rock. It scampered along 
that rock toward a cliff, but as soon as I stepped on 
the rock I slid down, gun, lantern, and all, into a brook. 
The dogs overtook the coon at the foot of the cliff, and 
they fought it to beat the band. A coon is a pretty 
cunning animal, and it's awful strong and spunky. I 
scrambled up somehow to where the coon was, and I 
managed to kick it two or three times to help the dogs 
out. Then it broke away and was climbing up the 
rocks when I shot it. Just heft it and see how solid 
it is." 



The Heart of the Hudson Highlands 77 

So I hefted the coon, and after a few final comments 
my visitors left me. 

In the morning, soon after six, I heard Mr. Stotten 
tramping upstairs and calling the boys, and by and by 
we had breakfast, with flapjacks for the chief item in 
the menu. There was a heaped-up plate when we 
started, and fresh additions, hot from the backroom 
stove, kept it heaping to the very end, in spite of our 
vigorous attacks. After we finished, Johnny had me 
look at one of the dogs that had gone on the hunt the 
previous night. There were bloodstains on the dog's 
neck and marks of the coon's teeth. " We got a standing 
offer of forty dollars for him," Johnny said. "He's 
gettin' kind o' old now, but he's smart as a whip and 
ain't afraid of nothin'. The only trouble is that his 
teeth are worn down so he can't get a holt and hang on. 

"One of our dogs was poisoned last spring right in 
his coop in the yard. He was a tarrier — a little bit of a 
runt like. In the morning we found him lying there 
all swelled up. Gosh! we gave him sweet milk and all 
we could think of, but it did n't do no good." 

"There's some queer things happen here," Mr. 
Stotten said. "Down on the river road a barn burned 
last week. Some one had been stealing from the man 
that owned it. Every time he'd git a load of feed the 
thief would come and help himself and take a hundred 
pounds or so. The man got tired of bein' robbed, and 
he bought some locks and fastened his barn up good 
and tight. That very night, after he went in and sot 



78 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

down to eat supper, his wife said: 'Oh look! What 
alight!' 

"The barn was on fire. He ran out intendin' to 
save his horses. His wife tried to hold him, but he 
shook her off" and went into the burning barn, and cut 
the horses loose and clubbed 'em out. It was a nice 
big barn, and he always kep' his flour and meat in there, 
and he had lots of good tools in it, and a carriage that 
cost one hundred and thirty dollars, and farm wagons 
and twenty ton of hay. He ain't got a secret too good 
to tell me, and since the fire we've talked things over. 
It's his idee that the guilty man is a feller that's lately 
moved into the neighborhood who has a habit of layin' 
around all day doin' nothin'. He's often been seen to 
hitch up in the evening and start off somewhere, and 
he must return late in the night, for no one sees him 
coming back. A man who does like that I would n't 
trust noways. But you have to be careful what you 
say when you can't prove it. No, people dassen't say 
much for fear he might burn 'em up while they lay 
asleep." 

"I saw someone come snoopin' around our house 
one evening," Luther said. "My gun was right handy 
in the shed, and I picked it up and blazed away at the 
feller as he was goin' down through the orchard. I 
shot to hit, too, but I probably did n't." 

Now the younger boys got their milkpails and went 
to the little barn where each had a cow to milk. One 
of the cows was tied in the barn because it had no 



The Heart of the Hudson Highlands 79 

respect for fences, but the other was in the barnyard. 
Luther took his coon, fastened it up on the sunny side 
of a shed, and began skinning it. Several dogs lingered 
about him, shivering in the chill morning air and 
watching him hungrily. I could not help remarking on 
the appearance of one of the dogs, he was so very lean 
and bony and forlorn. "That dog has got a good 
pedigree," Luther said, "but he killed one of our 
chickens in the summer, and that has set the women 
folks against him so they won't feed him. See that big 
bird up there in the sky. It's an eagle. Now it's mak- 
ing a turn, and the sun shines on its bald head and white 
tail feathers. They build their nests here among the 
rocks. It's dangerous to meddle with their nests. 
They'll pick and bite and claw savage. I've seen 
seven or eight of them at once up on Timp Moun- 
tain." 

Presently the task of skinning the coon was finished, 
and after the skin had been tacked up on the shed 
Luther and Mr. Stotten started off to their work some- 
where in the woods. Later in the day I retraced my 
steps to the valley depths of the Hudson. A three 
mile walk from the upland glen where I had been stop- 
ping took me to the railroad station, and then the 
metropolis was scarcely more than an hour's journey 
distant. The wonder was that so much of the wild and 
primitive should survive close beside the busy valley 
thoroughfares, and at such a slight remove from one 
of the most populous centers of civilization. 



8o Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

Note. — The Highlands of the Hudson, a continuation of the 
Appalachian Blue Ridge, lift some of their mightiest heights di- 
rectly beside the spacious and stately Hudson. A particularly easy 
and inexpensive way to make a general acquaintance with them 
and the river is to go on a day steamer from New York to Albany. 
The trip lasts from about 9 in the morning to 6 in the evening. The 
boats are magnificent in size and equipment, and the largest one 
will carry 5,000 passengers. The most interesting sights and points 
of interest along the river are the turretted peninsula of New York; 
the Palisades; the broad expanse of the Tappan Zee; the vicinity 
of Tarrytown, just below which place is Sunnyside, the quietly 
charming home of Washington Irving, while just above is the hamlet 
he made famous in his "Legend of Sleepy Hollow;" Stony Point, 
the scene of "Mad" Anthony Wayne's notable exploit in capturing 
the stronghold from the British in 1779; West Point; and the 
Mountains of the Highlands ending with Storm King. 

The river is not especially picturesque beyond Poughkeepsie, and 
many persons prefer to disembark there. On the outskirts of the 
city is Vassar College. 

The valley roads are macadam for the most part and offer many 
attractions for the motorist. A good opportunity to view the moun- 
tains from a height is afforded by the Dunderberg which is ascended 
by a spiral railway from Jones Point. The summit is an amuse- 
ment resort. 

For more about the characteristics and history of the valley see 
Johnson's "Picturesque Hudson." 



IV 



THE LAND OF OIL 

THE existence of mineral oil in the valley of Oil 
Creek in northwestern Pennsylvania was known 
to the Indians from time immemorial. The 
Senecas, who inhabited the region in the pioneer days 
of the white men, resorted thither at stated seasons to 
gather the oil for medical purposes; and in connection 
with procuring it there were certain ceremonies ending 
with setting fire to the oil that gathered on the surface 
of the pools, and a dance around the flames. 

The early settlers adopted the Indian practice of 
using the oil as a medicine, and they had a good deal of 
confidence in its efficacy as a cure for rheumatism. It 
was even put on the market and attained a large sale 
in the drugstores under the name of "Seneca Oil." 

At length some New York men conceived the idea 
that the oil had value as an illuminant, and that it might 
be obtained in larger quantities. They bought a 
seventy-five acre tract of land near Titusville, for which 
they paid five thousand dollars. It was practically 
worthless except for its oil possibilities. The new 
owners hired a man to trench the land and to pump the 
surface oil into vats by means of apparatus attached 
to that of an adjacent sawmill, but they gave most of 



82 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

their attention to selling stock. Several years passed, 
and the stockholders became dissatisfied. Some of 
them arranged to have one of their number, Col. E. L. 
Drake, at that time a conductor on the Xew Haven 
railroad, go to Titusville and take charge of operations 
on their land. He attempted to find oil by boring, and 
after prolonged and discouraging labor he tapped an 
underground reservoir of the oil, in August, 1859, and 
thus started a vast industry which made the valley of 
Oil Creek the scene of one of the wildest bonanza ex- 
citements of modern times. 

Everyone who owned land near the Drake well 
either sunk wells or leased the right to others. The 
uncertainties of the enterprise were, however, very 
great. By far the larger portion of the wells obtained 
no oil at all, or in unremumerative quantities, but there 
were a considerable number of the early wells that 
pumped from five to twenty barrels a day. In June, 
1 86 1, a flowing well was discovered on the property of 
a man named Funk, and to the astonishment of every- 
one the oil came forth at the daily rate of two hundred 
and fifty barrels. Many spoke of the Funk well as an 
Oil Creek humbug, and they looked day after day to 
see the stream stop, yet the flow continued with little 
variation for fifteen months. Such a prodigal supply of 
grease upset all calculations. The public were sus- 
picious of the new illuminant and thought it dangerous; 
so the demand for it was as yet small, and this Funk 
well and other flowing wells that were soon discovered 



The Land of Oil 83 

glutted the market. For a time the pumping wells were 
nearly all abandoned. The price of oil fell as low as 
ten cents a barrel, and great quantities ran to waste 
for want of any adequate way of storing it. 

In summer most of the oil was shipped down the 
creek on flatboats, and at the mouth of the creek, 
eighteen miles from Titusville, the oil barrels were 
transferred to larger boats and went on down the Alle- 
ghany. When there were not enough boats the oil 
barrels were lashed together in rafts for the creek trip, 
and might even continue in that way to Pittsburg. 
The creek boats were towed back upstream by horses. 

Not far below Titusville was a dam that furnished 
power for a lumber mill. In dry weather the creek was 
too shallow for navigation, and the water held back by 
the dam was utilized for creating "pond-freshets." 
Once or twice a week several hundred boats, some of 
them square-ended scows, and others pointed and 
slim, were loaded with oil, below the dam, and then the 
sudden release of the water through floodgates created 
a sufficient flow to carry the fleet along down to the 
Alleghany. Often a boat that cast loose too hastily 
would ground in the shallows, and the following boats, 
hurried on by the rush of the current, would batter the 
stranded boat into kindling wood, and there might 
result a general jam with much damage to vessels and 
a considerable loss of oil. 

The nearest railroad shipping points were twenty- 
five miles away, and great quantities of oil were carted 



84 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

thither, especially in winter when the creek was not 
available. It was not an uncommon sight to see a solid 
line o£ teams a mile or more in length on the highways 
leading to the railroads. Rubber boots and flannel 
shirts were recognized necessities in the attire of the 
teamsters, who were as rough and ready in their man- 
ners as in their clothing. They were big-hearted, 
honest, hard-working fellows, skilled in profanity and 
the vigorous use of the whip. Some earned ten dollars 
or more daily. Yet however much they earned they 
were apt to spend it all in revelry on Saturday night, 
heedless of anything but present pleasure. 

One afternoon, in May, 1863, a spouting well was 
struck that proved the most fabulous money-maker 
the region produced. A column of water and oil rose 
into the air a hundred feet enveloping the derrick and 
near trees. The gas roared and the ground quaked, 
and the amount of oil ejected at first amounted to three 
thousand barrels a day. 

The effect of this and the previous excitements was 
to throng the entire valley with a restless, ambitious 
population, and naturally among those who came were 
hundreds of loafers and numerous gamblers and other 
persons of evil intent. Within the next few years land 
anywhere near the producing territory soared to fabu- 
lous prices, and the region swarmed with a hungry 
horde of Eastern capitalists. A new town named 
Pithole grew in four month's time to a place of ten 
thousand people. During this period any kind of a 



The Land of Oil 85 

shelter was a luxury, and a stranger on his first night 
there was lucky to be allowed to sleep in the shavings 
under a carpenter's workbench. At the hastily im- 
provised restaurants long lines of men waited their 
turn to pay twenty-five cents for a thin sandwich and 
a small plate of beans, and men of wealth elbowed 
greasy drillers and grimy teamsters at the lunch boards. 
A one course dinner without tea or coffee cost one 
dollar. Water to supply the hotels and boarding- 
sheds had to be hauled, and this water often commanded 
a better price per barrel than the oil. The place reached 
the summit of its glory in 1866. Then the oil pool, 
which was about one mile broad by two long, showed 
signs of exhaustion, and the decline of the magic city 
was rapid. In a single year it had grown from a quiet 
nook of five farms to a place of twenty thousand people. 
A half dozen years later there were as few inhabitants 
as at the beginning, and now, the once populous streets 
are plowed fields or the browsing ground for cattle. 

The history of the deserted valley of Pithole Creek 
is similar to that of various other places in the region. 
Among these I might mention Red Hot, which for a 
time was like its name, but soon cooled off and died a 
natural death and left no trace behind; and there was 
Shamburg, which actually is a sham burg now, but 
was by no means such in the boom days. 

My own acquaintance with the oilfield wells that 
are still producing began on the southern outskirts of 
Titusville. One of them had been pumping for more 



86 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

than forty years. They were in irregular groups, each 
group with its pumping station, and all connected by 
pipes which delivered the oil to a refinery. Four-posted 
derricks with much crisscrossing of braces are over the 
older wells, but the increasing expense of lumber has 
led to making three long poles, set up to form a tripod, 
serve instead. Often these poles are transferred from 
well to well as new borings are made, and at the com- 
pleted wells there perhaps will be only an inconspicu- 
ous pump and a small storage tank. From each power 
house there radiate to the scattered wells slender lines 
of rods suspended by ropes from posts four or five feet 
high. These sway steadily back and forth and keep 
the pumps working. The power houses are rude 
shanties with a gas engine inside. Usually a single man 
takes care of the engine, and often he is not at the 
building much of the time, and the shanty is left locked 
with the engine still going. In that case the steam 
exhaust is likely to be equipped with a whistle that 
keeps up an intermittent tooting. The cessation of 
the toots is a prompt warning that something is wrong. 
These vocal engines are known as "barkers." 

Gas drawn from the same source as the oil furnishes 
the fuel for the engines, and if there is more than is 
needed it is allowed to escape through a pipe and burn. 
You see these torches flaring unceasingly both day and 
night. When darkness shrouds the landscape their 
flickering glare in the lonely fields and on the wooded 
slopes is quite mysterious. 




An old-time well that is still pumped 



The Land of Oil 87 

Were it not that the fuel is costless, this pioneer oil- 
field would perhaps be wholly abandoned, for the 
average yield per well is decidely less than a barrel a 
day. "We think they're dandy wells if they yield two 
or three barrels," one of the engine attendants said, 
"and we pump for an eighth of a barrel. Some of the 
wells are pumped only every other day, and maybe 
then for no more than an hour or two. We get to know 
about how long it takes to pump up what has gathered, 
and then we turn off the power to let more oil drain 
into the sand down below. Water seeps in with the 
oil — sometimes a great deal of it. I've pumped over 
two hundred barrels of water to get one of oil from a 
well." 

I visited the spot where the original Drake well was 
sunk. It is a short walk aside from the highway amid 
the weeds and brush, and you find there only a water- 
hole into which some one has thrust endways a large 
piece of iron pipe. Roundabout are swampy farmlands, 
and at a little remove, on either hand, rise rugged 
heights whose sides are thinly covered with forest. 
Near by I observed what seemed to be an abandoned 
railroad track, but a man whom I met informed me 
that it was still in use. "The Pennsylvania Railroad 
has a line on the other side of the crick," he said, "and 
it does n't propose to let any rival build on this side. 
It's got a ninety-nine year lease of the right of way here, 
but the lease has in it some provision compelling the 
running of trains. So in order to technically keep 



88 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

within the law a single train is run over the track each 
year. They have to cross the crick just above, and as 
a permanent bridge would be expensive they put up a 
slight affair that they take away after the train has 
made its journey, for if they did not remove the bridge 
it would be destroyed by the ice freshets. All there is 
to the train is a little dinkey engine and one car. They 
could n't use a big engine. It would flatten the tracks 
right out. Even as things are, the weight makes the 
water squush out of the rotten ties as the train goes along. 
Oh! they have an awful time, and usually land in the 
ditch. They run out here about six miles. It's a free 
picnic, and they always manage to have a few passen- 
gers on board. One of our legislators tried to pass a 
law annulling such fake leases; but the Pennsylvania 
Railroad owns the state, and he got notice to keep his 
hands off, and his efforts amounted to nothing." 

I went on southward following a winding way up 
and down interminable hills. It was a rather lonely 
farming country. The houses were small, the out- 
buildings shabby, and there was much litter about 
them. Sometimes an oil well or two would be right 
in the dooryard, and I was rarely out of sight of the 
derricks, or beyond the sound of the pumping opera- 
tions, and nearly always there was the odor of oil in 
the air. But it was a beautiful day with drifting clouds 
overhead that now gloomed the landscape with their 
shadows, and then allowed a burst of sunshine to play 
over the green, new-seeded grainfields, and the browner 



The Land of Oil 89 

grass and cornlands, and the patches of woodland with 
their half bare branches still adorned in part by clinging 
leaves of many varied hues. 

At noon I visited a little while with two men who 
were sitting on a bank eating their lunch in a roadside 
nook among the ruddy-foliaged oaks. Near by were 
two stout spans of horses munching a feed of oats that 
had been poured down on the mossy turf, and beside 
the highway were two loaded wagons. The men were 
drillers on their way to a neighboring village where 
they were to put down a well. They mentioned that 
the last well they drilled was somewhat over a thousand 
feet deep, and it took them eight days to sink it. Drill- 
ing was their business, and they kept at it, if they had 
jobs, all the year through except in winter. They ex- 
plained that there were four different streaks of oil- 
bearing sand down below, but none of them yielded 
very generously now. "We don't get half what we 
did ten years ago," they said, "and the wells are getting 
lighter all the time." 

At length I came to the village of Petroleum Center. 
It occupies a turn of the Oil Creek valley where the 
abrupt environing hills recede somewhat and leave a 
fairly level stretch of lowland. Once a mushroom city 
had grown here almost in a night. Now only the ghost 
of it was left. The stream flows on as of yore, and the 
unchanging hills continue to look down on the scene 
through winter snows and summer heats. Only man 
and his works seem puny and ephemeral. One of my 



90 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

chance acquaintances in the place called my attention 
to the fact that even the hills and the stream have not 
always presented the same appearance. Out of the 
low ground at the bend of the creek rises a round, steep 
hill. "We call that the Hogback," the man said. "It 
looks curious, don't it, right in the middle of the valley. 
I used to think that God made the world just as we see 
it but water has had a good deal to do with shaping 
things, and that accounts for the Hogback. Once the 
stream must have run in behind that hill as well as on 
this side of it and worn the land down." 

Among the few scattered village structures that have 
survived the boom period the only substantial one was 
a brick store that was originally a bank. Even that 
had a dejected air, many of its windows were broken, 
and there was no display of goods behind the dusty, 
fly-specked panes at the front of the store. The in- 
terior was equally unattractive. It was crowded and 
dingy. In one corner were mail boxes, and the con- 
tents of the boxes looked faded and musty as if the 
mail never was called for. 

Most of the adjacent buildings were deserted and 
ruinous, and the whole aspect of the place conveyed a 
sense of dilapidation and hopelessness. I wanted to 
talk with someone who knew personally the city that 
had been, and my quest led me to a little house at the 
upper end of the village. I was ushered into a tidy 
sitting room where I was somewhat abashed to find 
myself in the midst of what seemed to be a ladies' 




Oil Creek at Petroleum Center 



The Land of Oil 91 

sewing-circle. But when I hinted that I was intruding 
on a public occasion they said they were simply old 
friends who had got together to while away the after- 
noon visiting. There were half a dozen of them, 
mostly elderly, and all long-time residents of the region 
who plainly enjoyed recalling the exciting past; but 
my chief informant was the spectacled, white-haired 
lady of the house. 

"Everybody in the country seemed to be migrating 
to Oil Creek when I come," she said. "At first my 
husband and I lived in a boarding-house at Funkville 
just above here. It was a pretty good-sized building — 
two and a half stories — but very hastily and rudely 
built, without lath or plaster, and yet they charged 
eight dollars a week for board. Our chamber was the 
only one in the house that had wallpaper. It was better 
than the others, too, because there was a boughten bed- 
room set in it. A party that had occupied it before we 
did brought the set with 'em, but got hard up, and the 
set went toward paying the board bill. The walls of 
the dining-room were papered with newspapers. The 
big dining-table, around which twenty-five or thirty 
persons could gather comfortably, was so roughly made 
it looked as if it had been whittled out, pretty near. 
Often the boys would have in the girls of a night and 
dance in the dining-room. Then the big table would 
have to be taken out. Up in the attic were nine home- 
made, corded, wooden beds with low bedposts and 
little small headboards. They had straw mattresses 



92 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

on 'em, and every day the servant girl would stir up 
the straw to make 'em level. 

"The way that boarding-house was built and fur- 
nished was a fair sample of what you'd find then all 
through the valley. We had just shanty houses that 
were n't put up for to stay. If the oil failed in one 
place a man could take his worldly goods, house and 
all, and go somewhere else. I remember one house 
here that was taken down in the morning and carted 
eight or ten miles, and then it was set up and the owner 
slept in it that night. 

"We had ten thousand people in Petroleum Center 
one while. Now I doubt if there's a hundred. It's a 
lovely place, ain't it! I think a person would have to 
put on his spectacles to find it as he went past on the 
train. When it was largest it was full of hotels, res- 
taurants, and saloons, and was about as tough a place 
as was ever heard of. Derricks, buildings, and roads 
was all jumbled together hit or miss. We used to have 
three churches. They done well, and the Catholic 
priest and the two ministers all lived here, and crowds 
of people attended the services. Two of the buildings 
still stand, but it's hard work to get any congregation 
together in either of 'em. There's just a handful gather 
every other week when the priest comes; and no regu- 
lar preaching service is held in the other church, but 
we have Sunday-school. A few years ago some Episco- 
pal lay-workers volunteered to try to keep things going, 
and quite a nice little crowd came out off and on for a 



The Land of Oil 93 

while. But the workers could n't get enough to pay 
expenses, and they threw up the job. Some of the 
people was n't able to pay, and some would n't. Just 
now two revivalists are trying to have meetings every 
night, but the attendance is slim. They had only 
three grown persons and a few children the first night. 
People ain't interested, and they simply won't go." 

My hostess paused while she went to a small stove 
that was in the room and adjusted a stopcock at one 
side. "It's getting toward evening," she said, "and 
the air is growing cooler. I thought I'd turn on a little 
more gas. In the early years that I was here soft coal 
was our fuel, and I'd have liked it very well if it had n't 
burnt out our chimleys so quick and been so dirty. 
If you took off a stove lid to have your griddle right 
over the flames, the bottom of the griddle would get 
all coated with stringers of sut. I'd feel discouraged, 
too, when I hung out my washing and the clothes got 
covered with little smut balls. That would happen in 
moist weather — on days, you know, when the smoke 
would blow down instead of going up. Now we have 
gas piped to our houses to furnish all the heat and light. 
It costs us twenty-eight cents a thousand. Besides 
this little stove we have a range in the kitchen. Our 
gas bill last month was a dollar-twelve, and it was less 
than three dollars the coldest month last winter. I 
think it would be awful to have a coal or wood stove 
with all the ashes and dirt. 

"Lots of gas used to be wasted. I know that near 



94 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

one of the refineries there was a good-sized pipe sticking 
up from which the gas flamed night and day all the 
year around, and there was a place in winter as large 
as a big room where the grass grew green with the 
snowbanks all about." 

Another person whose reminiscenses particularly 
interested me was a Titusville merchant who had aided 
in financing the first well, and without whose help the 
well might have been a failure. "Drake was a jovial, 
kind-hearted, polished gentleman," he said. "It was 
his habit to wear a silk hat and a white necktie, and he 
was quite distinguished looking. He hired two or three 
men and set 'em to digging with the hope that a good 
deep hole would strike a plentiful supply of oil. As 
they dug they put a cribbing of logs around the sides of 
the hole to keep the earth from caving in. Soon so 
much water soaked in that it put a stop to digging. 
Then they rigged up a pump, but the water came in as 
fast as they could pump it out, and presently Drake 
said: 'This won't do. We're pumping all Oil Creek 
here.' 

"He thought the matter over and got the idea of 
drilling. To drill through rock would n't have been 
very difficult, but at that spot was a lot of mud and 
water and earth that would have filled the drill hole 
right up. He had a difficult task. To set a man to get 
at a supply of underground oil at that time was like 
blindfolding him and telling him to do something that 
had never been heard of before. But he got some four 



The Land of Oil 95 

inch pipe which he rudely jointed together, and that 
served to carry him through the soft upper material 
to the rock. It was slow, discouraging work, and he 
worried a great deal and evidently was under a great 
mental strain. I've heard him say many times, while 
he was putting that well down, that he wished he'd 
gone to the penitentiary instead of coming here. At 
length he was hard up for money, and he asked me to 
indorse his note for five hundred dollars. I had con- 
fidence in him as a man, and I did as he requested. 
He did n't have much to say about his drilling enter- 
prise, and let it be inferred that he was after salt. The 
people would have thought he was a crazy fool if he'd 
said he was boring for oil. 

"The actual labor of drilling was done by Uncle 
Billy Smith, assisted by his son. Uncle Billy was a 
mechanic accustomed to salt boring, but things went 
slowly. Drake had been here sixteen months and was 
about to go back home and apply for his old position 
on the railroad when they struck oil at a depth of 
seventy feet. That was the shallowest successful well 
ever drilled in this oil field. If he'd had to go any deeper 
he'd have abandoned the enterprise. Either fortune 
or Providence favored him. The oiL rose within five 
inches of the surface. When pumped, it yielded four 
hundred barrels a day. Drake was a big man then. 
'I've got any amount of friends now,' he said when he 
came into the store to pay his account. 

"He might have leased land up and down the valley 



96 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

and got rich; but he was n't what you'd call a good 
business man, looking out for the dollars. He liked 
his ease too well. Besides, he thought he had all the 
oil there was right at that one place. For a while he 
set down here and became a justice of the peace. His 
friends let him into some of the oil companies, but he 
never made much. A place he bought here in town 
proved to be his best investment. Property advanced 
very rapidly in price on account of the oil excitement, 
and he sold out at a profit of twenty thousand dollars. 
Then he thought he was rich, and he went to New 
York and lost every cent within a few months. Finally 
the Pennsylvania legislature was induced to grant him 
a pension, and his wife still draws it. 

"We all begun to put down wells after Drake made 
his strike, and sometimes we'd have only a wet hole, 
and be flooded out, and sometimes a dry hole with 
never a smell of oil in it. But enough good wells were 
found to keep up the excitement. There were fellows 
who did first-rate gathering up territory here and taking 
it to New York to sell. I sold a fifty-acre tract of 
swamp myself there. My customers were important 
New York bankers. They figured out so many wells 
to an acre and were convinced there was a magnificent 
future in that piece of swamp. It could have been 
bought for twenty-five dollars before the boom. They 
paid me a hundred thousand for it, and they never got 
any oil at all from the property. Another deal that I 
helped put through was one involving a quarter of a 



The Land of Oil 97 

million dollars, and I was given five thousand dollars 
worth of stock for my services. Unluckily, I did n't 
get a chance to unload before the bubble burst, and 
my stock was practically worthless." 

I wish to quote one other man. His memory covered 
the entire period of the rise and fall of the oil industry 
in the region. He was a grizzled, bushy-browed man, 
still alert of mind and vigorous in body, but age was 
beginning to tell on him, and his hands were contorted 
with rheumatism. 

"According to a record in my mother's old Bible," 
he said, "I discovered America here in Titusville in 
1840. So I was nineteen when Drake struck oil. This 
was a lumbering hamlet then, and there were two good- 
sized sawmills here. The logs were run down the cricks 
to 'em, and the sawed lumber was made into small 
rafts. After the rafts reached the Alleghany they were 
coupled up into river fleets and floated on down to 
Pittsburg. The country was heavily wooded, princi- 
pally with pine. It had not been cleared to any extent, 
and the mills run their business till up along pretty 
near 1870. Then the pine timber was about exhausted. 
But new firms sprung up later that gathered up the 
remnants in our woodlands, and those remnants were 
worth more, at the higher prices that prevailed, than 
the original timber. 

"The sawmills employed all the laboring men in 
this region when I was a boy. They paid them with 
orders on the companies' stores. We saw very little 



98 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

money. If a man had a quarter it was got away from 
him in about fifteen minutes. But in the spring, after 
the mills sold their lumber, they distributed enough 
cash so their workmen could pay their taxes. Few 
people raised any crops except a little buckwheat and 
a small patch of potatoes. The families along the creek 
led a rough life, and two thirds of their houses were logs. 
In winter they'd make a few shingles, and in spring 
you'd find 'em hired out rafting lumber to Pittsburg. 
Often they were so poor they'd return on foot. 

"We probably had two hundred inhabitants here 
in Titusville. There were a couple of hotels that de- 
pended mostly on the men engaged in the spring lumber- 
ing operations, and there were three stores. My 
brother-in-law kept what was called the drugstore, and 
the principal drug was whiskey. Every store sold 
liquor them days. They did n't have to have any 
licence. 

"Our mail come and went twice a week. Old man 
Cook was the carrier. He drove an ancient sorrel 
horse hitched to a rattletrap buggy. When it suited 
him to get here with the mail on the days it was due 
he got here. Otherwise he did n't, and he considered 
that was no one's affair but his own. There was n't 
much mail anyway, and it did n't matter. Often he 
stopped for the night with an old lady who lived three 
miles out. Sometimes we boys would go there and 
steal the mail and bring it to town. 

"When Drake struck oil three of us young fellows 



V 





o 



The Land of Oil 99 

got a little bit excited and thought we'd try our luck. 
So in the fall of that same year we leased five acres of 
land and organized "The Great American Oil Com- 
pany." The justice of the peace charged us a dollar 
for drawing up the lease, and as we only had sixty cents 
he had to trust us for the rest, and he died without 
getting it. We kind o' forgot that debt, and he never 
asked us for the balance due him. The owner of the 
land was a poor — very poor farmer. We agreed to 
give him five dollars a month and an eighth of the oil. 
That looked big to him. 

"For shelter we built a shanty on the property, and 
I did the cooking. We started work in a very modest 
way by digging a pit on our land near the crick. At a 
depth of four feet we struck bed rock, and we brought 
an old wooden pump from town and rigged it up to 
pump the water out of the hole. A little oil oozed in 
with the water and formed a thin skin on top. By 
putting half a woolen blanket down flat on the surface 
we could soak up the oil, and then we'd wring the 
blanket out into a pail. Any water that was soaked 
up with the oil would settle to the bottom of the pail, 
and we'd pour off the top into a barrel. After the oil 
was sopped off from our pool we pumped the water out 
into the crick. That was a half-hour job, and it took 
the pit an hour to fill again. We got about eight gal- 
lons of oil a day, and when we filled the barrel we took 
it to a grocer here, and he gave us thirty dollars. I 
thought that was a big amount of money, for I'd never 



ioo Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

had two dollars in my life before. The oil was high- 
grade, and was sold for lubricating and medical pur- 
poses. It was no humbug either as a medicine. I'd 
been having trouble with my throat, and I would put 
a leaf down on that crude oil and lick if off. That cured 
my throat entirely, and I've never had a sore throat 
since. 

"We worked that blanket process for three or four 
months. Then we hired a couple of men to drill a well. 
They brought their tools on their backs from Oil City. 
The whole outfit did n't weigh more'n a hundred 
pounds. We drilled all winter. The well was kicked 
down, just as most of the early wells were. A long 
slender pole was adjusted on a post, and the drill was 
suspended from the small end. To the rope that held 
the drill a leather loop was attached into which the 
driller could put his foot, and by giving a downward 
kick the drill would be brought into action. Then the 
spring of the pole raised it ready for another kick. 

"After getting down I s'pose a hundred and fifty 
feet we struck oil, and the next morning, when I went 
to the well and stepped inside of the shack we'd built 
above the drill hole, my foot went into about eight 
inches of oil that had flowed during the night. It was 
thick, like molasses, and we scooped up half a dozen 
barrels full. But when we went to pumping we got 
mostly water, and it did n't pay. Then we put down 
another well, and that was no go either. By that time 
I did n't have a dollar, and I was ready to give away 



The Land of Oil 101 

my third interest in the Great American Oil Company. 
While I was in that frame of mind a man come lookin' 
around our property, and after some talk he asked me 
what I'd take for my third. At first I was going to say 
two hundred dollars, but on second thought I said to 
myself, 'I'll just paralize the old gent;' and I told him 
my price was four thousand dollars. 

"I expected he'd kick me into the crick, but he closed 
the bargain. He was from Jamestown, New York, and 
two other men there were interested in the deal. They 
paid me a thousand dollars in gold and gave me a note 
for the balance. 

"It seemed to me I was rich enough to be satisfied 
for a while, and I went down to Pittsburg and attended 
school for a year. At the end of that time I started for 
home. On the way I stopped one evening at a tavern 
where the local school board was having a meeting. 
A teacher had recently had a row with his pupils and 
they had thrown him out and would n't let him come 
back. So he left, and the authorities were looking for 
a new teacher. I told 'em I'd take the job if I did n't 
have to board round. The president of the committee 
said I could make my home with him, and I accepted 
his proposal. He was a great talker and wanted me 
for company. 

"The schoolhouse was a clapboarded frame building, 
but the clapboards were off in a good many places, and 
it was delapidated and pretty near ready to tumble 
down. In the schoolroom there was a continuous 



102 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

bench against the wall around three sides, with a desk 
in front. On the remaining side was my desk on a 
platform. The children got the fuel we burned from a 
soft coal bank back of the building. I taught reading, 
writing, and arithmetic, and it was a part of my work 
to set the copies for the children in their writing-books, 
and sharpen their goose-quill pens. It's quite an art 
to sharpen a goose-quill, but I had that art all right. 
Books were n't very plentiful. However, most of 
the pupils had a spelling-book. 

"I did n't like teaching. I'd rather do anything 
else than teach school. The committee hired me for 
three months, and I was glad it was n't for a longer 
period. I guess the pupils were gladder than I was. 
One little fellow, when I began to teach, knew all his 
letters but four, and by the time I was through he'd 
forgotten all but four. 

"Meanwhile I had n't got my money on that three 
thousand dollar note. The property had proved to 
be valueless, and the whole thing had been shut down 
and abandoned. So the Jamestown men did n't want 
to pay me, and I had to hire a lawyer to make 'em see 
things in the right light. Then I was obliged to go to 
Jamestown to get my money. I put up over night 
there at a hotel, and in the morning went to a bank, 
which turned over the cash to me. It was in bills of 
small denomination, mostly ones and twos, and they 
made a great big package that I could just crowd into 
my inside overcoat pocket. I went back to the hotel, 



The Land of Oil 103 

and after sitting a while in the office it occurred to me 
that I would go out for a walk and see the town. The 
day was warm and I took off my overcoat and left it 
hanging in the hotel office. By and by I thought of my 
money and rushed back to the hotel in a great sweat. 
It had n't been stolen, and I was much relieved. Then 
I put the overcoat on with a determination to wear it 
the rest of the time. I even wore it while I ate my 
dinner. 

" In the early afternoon I took a train for home. The 
train did n't go clear through and I had to change and 
wait at a junction. Rather than loaf around the station 
there I decided to go for a stroll, and to relieve myself 
of any anxiety I had the express agent put my money in 
his safe. When I came back to the station my train was 
just leaving, and I ran and jumped on the last car. 
The train was going at a good speed before I thought 
of my money. It was left behind. 

"I came to Titusville, and gave the express agent 
here an order so the money could be forwarded. Gen- 
erally the train ran off the track every day and of course 
there had to be a smashup when my money was com- 
ing. The little iron express box lay in the woods two 
or three days, but it got here in the end. My money 
was turned over to me on a Saturday, and I put in all 
the next day counting it. Eleven hundred dollars I 
spent to build a house. It was a good investment. A 
few years later a man come along and looked at the 
house and says, 'What'll you take for this shebang?' 



104 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

"'Six thousand dollars,' I said, and he bought it at 
my figure. 

"You see property in Titusville and the entire valley 
took a great boom. Such crowds rushed in here that 
they had the greatest difficulty to find lodging at night. 
The hotel-keepers would put a man to bed, and as soon 
as he was asleep would take him to the hall and hang 
him on a hook and give someone else the bed. To 
show you how rapidly population could grow let me 
tell you about the postmaster at Pithole. He began 
there on a salary of twelve dollars and a half a year. 
He was expected to keep track of the stamps sold, and 
in most such places the results would n't warrant 
raising the pay more than a very little, but in less than 
three months he was handling such an amount of mail 
that the salary was raised to four thousand dollars, 
the same as was paid at Pittsburg. 

"As for the oil business its character was wildly 
speculative for a long time. Many came here rich and 
went away poor, and very few came poor and went 
away rich. Numerous wildcat wells were sunk all 
around the region that cost good money and were per- 
fectly worthless. If a fellow made one or two good 
investments and lucky sales he began to think he was 
a master of frenzied finance, and he'd most likely strike 
for Wall Street. He and his money were soon parted 
there. 

"Loss and gain in large amounts were a commonplace 
here. They tell of two strangers who occupied the same 



The Land of Oil 105 

room in one of our crowded hotels. One of 'em went 
to bed, but he could n't sleep because his fellow-roomer 
persisted in walking the floor. Finally he says, "What's 
the matter with you?' 

"'I've given a note for five thousand dollars that's 
due tomorrow,' was the reply. 

"Have you got the money to pay it?' says the first 
man. 

"'No,' says the second man. 

'"Then you'd better come to bed', says the first 
man, 'and let the other fellow do the walking.' 

"Most of the poor backwoods farmers in the valley 
sold their land at fabulous prices, or arranged leases 
that brought great and sudden wealth, but they 
could n't stand the change. They did n't know how 
to spend the money, or how to keep it intact. Their 
sons became drunkards, and the money vanished in 
dissipation, extravagance, and poor investments. I 
know of only one land owning family of that period in 
this valley that has retained the money which came 
to it." 

Note. — In the oil region, even in travelling on the train, one sees 
numerous oil-wells, both in operation and deserted. The great 
center of the Pennsylvania oil district is Oil City, and the traveller 
can see there all the processes of procuring, preparing, and shipping 
the oil and its products. In 1892 a large oil tank in the city caught 
fire, and the burning oil overspread the water of the creek and caused 
the destruction of many buildings and a considerable loss of life. 

It is estimated that from the valley of Oil Creek, north of Oil 



106 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

City, oil to the value of #200,000,000 was taken in the ten busy early 
years. The present yield is insignificant. Titusville has an especial 
claim on the sightseer because there the oil was discovered. Inter- 
esting visits may be made to the hamlets down the creek which grew 
with magic rapidity into populous cities in the boom period, and 
almost as suddenly vanished. 

There are automobile routes from Titusville north and south and 
east and west. The one north goes to Erie, 53 miles, by way of 
Cambridge Springs, and the one south to Pittsburg, 113 miles, by 
way of Mercer. The roads are good dirt or gravel. 

For more about northwestern Pennsylvania see "Highways and 
Byways of the Great Lakes." 



AN INDUSTRIAL METROPOLIS 

PITTSBURG was discovered by George Wash- 
ington. In other words, Washington first sug- 
gested the spot as a desirable site for a fort, 
while it was still untamed wilderness. This sugges- 
tion was made in January, 1854, after he returned to 
Virginia from an adventurous journey over the moun- 
tains to demand that the French, who were beginning 
to establish themselves in the region, should withdraw. 
Hitherto the angle where the Alleghany and Monon- 
gahela rivers unite to form the Ohio had been neglected, 
though it was scarcely less important than Niagara as 
a key to the great West. A band of backwoodsmen 
was promptly dispatched to start a fort there. They 
had been at work on it about two months when they 
were interrupted by the arrival of a swarm of bateaux 
that came down the Alleghany bringing half a thousand 
Frenchmen from Canada. The latter soon compelled 
the English to abandon their project. They then de- 
molished the unfinished fort and began a much larger 
one to which they gave the name of Duquesne, their 
governor. 

The next year General Braddock arrived in Virginia 
with troops from England. More troops were raised 



108 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

in the colonies, and in June the little army entered the 
wilderness on its way to the Ohio. Three hundred 
axmen went on ahead to cut and clear the road, and 
in the rear followed the train of packhorses, wagons, 
and cannon, toiling over the stumps, roots, and stones 
of the narrow forest track. Squads of men were thrown 
out on the flanks, and scouts ranged the woods to guard 
against surprise. The French were well aware of this 
hostile expedition, and a few of them and some of their 
Indian allies hovered about the English, and now and 
then scalped a straggler. 

On the seventh of July the main body of the English, 
consisting of twelve hundred soldiers, besides officers 
and drivers, forded the Monongahela from the southern 
to the northern bank about eight miles from their 
destination. They were beginning to move along a 
rough path in the dense woodland toward Fort Du- 
quesne when the head of the column encountered the 
enemy. About three hundred French and six hundred 
Indians had come forth from the fort to oppose them. 
The place of meeting was at the foot of a steep and 
lofty hill where now is the busy, smoke-belching manu- 
facturing city of Braddock. There was no ambuscade, 
and at first the advantage was with the English. But 
their opponents soon scattered and fought from behind 
the trees, while the English regulars remained in hud- 
dled ranks, greatly disconcerted because they could 
see no enemy to shoot at. A charge on the lurking 
Indians would have been useless, for they would have 



An Industrial Metropolis 109 

scattered and eluded pursuit and quickly returned to 
the attack. 

The Virginians at first fought effectively in the In- 
dian fashion and might have saved the day, had not 
the brave but injudicious Braddock, furious at such 
apparent lack of discipline and courage, ordered them 
with oaths to fall into line. Some of the regulars, who 
in a clumsy way imitated the provincials, he beat with 
his sword and compelled them to stand with the rest 
in the open. Braddock had four horses shot under 
him, and he dashed to and fro like a madman. Wash- 
ington, then a youth of twenty-three, who was one of 
Braddocks aids, had two of the horses that he rode 
killed, and four bullets passed through his clothes. 

In the end Braddock was fatally wounded, and the 
mob of soldiers, after being three hours under fire, and 
their ammunition exhausted, broke away in a blind 
frenzy and ran back to the ford. About three-fourths 
of the force had been killed or disabled. The fugitives 
were not pursued, yet they hurried on all night, nearly 
overcome with fear and despair. During the days that 
followed, the retreat continued with a good deal of 
disorder, and the abandonment or destruction of 
much baggage. On the thirteenth day Braddock died. 
He was buried in the road, and the men, horses, 
and wagons passed over his grave, effacing every sign 
of it, lest the Indians should find and multilate the 
body. 

The losses on the French side in the battle were 



no Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

probably scarcely a tenth of those suffered by the 
English. After the conflict ended, the field had been 
abandoned to the savages, who made it a pandemonium 
of pillage and murder. Later they returned to the fort 
laden with plunder and scalps and escorting about a 
dozen prisoners. These captives were tied to stakes 
and burned to death that night on the banks of the 
Alleghany opposite the fort, with the Indians dancing 
about and yelling like fiends. 

Where the great modern city now stands, the wilder- 
ness had only been subdued at the extreme point of the 
peninsula. The fort had the water close on two sides, 
and it frowned down on the river with a massive 
stockade of upright logs, twelve feet high, mortised 
together and loopholed. Facing in the other directions 
were ramparts of squared logs, filled in with earth and 
fully ten feet thick. There was an open space within 
surrounded by barracks for the soldiers, officers' 
quarters, the lodgings of the commandant, a guard- 
house, and a storehouse, all built partly of logs and 
partly of boards. The forest had been cleared away 
to a distance of more than a musket shot from the ram- 
parts, and the stumps were hacked level with the ground. 
In this cleared space, close to a protecting ditch that 
adjoined the fort, bark cabins had been built for such 
of the troops and Canadians as could not find room 
within. The rest of the space was covered with Indian 
corn and other crops. 

Three years later the English again made an attempt 



An Industrial Metropolis in 

against Fort Duquesne. At their approach the French 
blew up the fortifications and withdrew. Soon after- 
ward, on the same spot, Fort Pitt was begun. It was 
substantial and costly, but it is all gone now with the 
exception of one little blockhouse. This blockhouse 
was erected when there was fear of trouble with the 
Indians at the time of Pontiac's Conspiracy. On the 
landward side of the fort at that time was a moat, but 
the moat was perfectly dry when the river was low, 
and the savages could crawl up the ditch and shoot any 
person who might show his head above the parapet. 
The blockhouse was built to command the moat and 
frustrate that sort of approach. 

The sturdy little brick and timber structure, loop- 
holed as of old for the discharge of muskets, is almost 
swallowed up now in the great city. It occupies a 
secluded nook with the buildings of the town encroach- 
ing close on one side, and numerous railway tracks on 
the other. Pittsburgers are reputed to be too busy 
making money to think about the history of the place, 
but they have provided for the permanent preservation 
of this blockhouse. 

Until recently the caretaker was an elderly woman 
who had been at the blockhouse a long, long time keep- 
ing it tidy, selling souvenirs, and recounting its story 
to visitors. But one day, when she had finished eating 
dinner, she very calmly remarked to her daughter: 
"Oh! what's the use of it all? Let's take the butcher- 
knife route to get away. I'm so tired of this world! 



112 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

There's nothing in life but just saying one thing over 
and over and over again." 

Then she caught up a big knife and made a grab at 
her daughter, but the latter took refuge in flight and 
escaped out of the house. When she returned with 
help she found that her mother had hung herself with 
the clothesline. 

A new caretaker was installed in the blockhouse, and 
her reticence is said to have been quite monumental 
for a time. Visitors naturally concluded that her pre- 
decessor's tragic end had made her solicitous lest much 
repetition in the imparting of information should craze 
her also. 

The neighboring waterways have been the scene of 
many interesting and curious incidents, and among 
the rest I would recall the fact that in 1777 a ducking- 
stool was established where the Alleghany and Monon- 
gahela unite to flow on as the Ohio. A visiting Vir- 
ginian writing of the Pittsburg of that time says, "The 
homes were miserable huts, and the inhabitants as 
dirty as in the north of Ireland or Scotland itself. The 
place was unblessed by the gospel and infested with 
dogs." 

About the same time another gentleman, in giving 
his first impressions of the place, wrote of how surprised 
travellers were to find here "elegant assemblages of 
ladies and a constant round of parties and public balls." 

Which was the truer view of the town? Very likely 
the observers simply came into contact with different 



An Industrial Metropolis 113 

phases of the local life, and doubtless there were various 
grades of society. As for the ducking-stool its use was 
not confined to punishing a too free use of the tongue 
on the part of the lowly. Women of position were num- 
bered also among its victims. 

Imagine the scene when a ducking was to take place. 
Here were the unsullied streams and a frontier village 
amid the virgin forest. All work was suspended and a 
crowd had gathered. Some of the men wore cocked 
hats and laced ruffles and buckles and swords, and 
there were Indian stragglers gay with paint and feathers 
looking on to see how the pale-face managed his squaws. 
Fine ladies had come in their silks and satins, and gap- 
ing lads and lasses in coarse attire of fustian and woolen, 
and stolid hunters and woodsmen, slatternly women of 
the humble class, and swarms of dirty children. 

All were gazing at the unhappy victim suspended 
ready for her plunge. Our forbears thought the pun- 
ishment plainly fitted to the crime, for as they said it 
was "to drown the noise that is in a woman's head." 
The ducking-stool was hung at the end of a pole which 
worked on a horizontal bar supported by two uprights. 
A sousing, at least temporarily, always had the desired 
effect, and the woman would beg for mercy and promise 
in future to control her unruly tongue. 

Pittsburg's three rivers were vital channels of traffic 
in the old days, but now they are far less important 
than the railroads. This is partly because they are not 
dependable. In winter they are icebound, and in sum- 



H4 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

mer there are times when the Pittsburg boys play 
baseball on the dry sandbars in the bed of the streams. 
Many steep bluffs and rude, lofty hills border the rivers 
in the Pittsburg neighborhood and the region above. 
They give an enlivening touch to the scene, and, before 
the industrial period, must have been wildly beautiful. 
At their bases, beside the streams, is a constant succes- 
sion of manufacturing villages whence the smoke never 
ceases belching forth from the tall chimneys and keeps 
the valleys forever grimy, and the atmosphere dim and 
sooty. Pittsburg itself with its numerous iron furnaces 
and busy factories is of course the monarch of this in- 
dustrial realm; and as seen by night, when the furnace 
flames leap and glow amid the gloom along the water- 
sides, it has been likened to hell with the lid off. Here 
is produced one-half the steel and glass that is manu- 
factured in the United States. It has more millionaires 
than any other city on the globe, and the finest resi- 
dences and grounds in America. Aside from the fact 
that it is an important gateway to the West, the chief 
secret of its growth lies in its position in the center of a 
region exceedingly rich in bituminous coal, iron, oil, 
and natural gas. So general was the use of this gas at 
one time that the city emerged from its smoke cloud, 
but the period was short, and the factories and furnaces 
resorted again to coal and coke. Nevertheless, except 
for the big manufacturing plants, it is natural gas that 
lights and heats most of the big town. I was informed 
that the gas is so cheap that the poor people, who in any 




•l- SQk£**t« -: 



^ /o// bridge 



An Industrial Metropolis 115 

other city would eagerly carry off the wood rubbish 
resulting from building operations, here disdain such 
stuff, and men have to be paid to cart it away. 

Formerly Pittsburg had a reputation for being super- 
latively healthful. It is related that the three first 
churches were on adjacent corners and employed a 
single sexton, who was once known to remark com- 
plainingly that the times were very hard — for he had 
had no person to bury for three months. As late as 
1845 a physician on a tour visited Pittsburg and pub- 
lished the affirmation that he never before was in such 
a healthful place. He especially recommended it to 
persons suffering from dropsies, dysentaries, and 
cholera. Its beneficial qualities he attributed to its 
remoteness from the swamps of the Mississippi Valley, 
and to the gases which filled the air from the bitumin- 
ous coal that was burned. 

At a somewhat later period deaths became rather 
numerous, but this was no reflection on the healthful- 
ness of the situation. It was the result of the influx of 
foreign laborers, "who used to kill each other every 
Saturday night after they got their wages." 

Among its other assets this thoroughly modern city 
has a ghost story. There was formerly a pack peddler 
who went about the adjacent region, and he was suffi- 
ciently aristocratic to have his packs carried by a negro 
servant. One day the peddler was found dead. His 
throat had been cut, and his valuables stolen. The 
negro was suspected. He was caught and bound and 



n6 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

hung on Pittsburg's highest hill. Since then that hill 
has been haunted. For a long time its crest was an 
amusement park. This became rather tough in char- 
acter, and those of its patrons who came home late at 
night with the gifts of visions imparted by liberal 
draughts of booze often saw the negro's eerie figure 
stalking through the gloom with his hands tied behind 
his back. 

One of the city's sources of excitement is its floods. 
The frequency and height of these very likely have 
some relation to the deforesting of the headwaters of 
the streams, but the encroaching of the manufactories 
on the banks has doubtless narrowed the channels, and 
dams back the water. "We had one of our greatest 
floods in 1832, the year I was born," an elderly citizen 
said to me. "It submerged the whole lower part of the 
town. An immense amount of driftwood used to come 
down in those old-time floods. That was due to the 
lumbering done up above. A good many people here 
went out in boats to catch the best of it. Some of it 
floated near enough to shore so you could catch it with 
a pole. You could get a supply of firewood and some 
good sawlogs. 

"Freight went and came over the mountains in 
long, heavy wagons with bowed tops covered with 
canvas. Each wagon was drawn by four or six horses. 
There was a good deal of rivalry among the drivers 
to beat each other in the time they made. A driver who 
got here from the east within a specified number of 



An Industrial Metropolis 117 

hours was privileged to suspend some bells over the 
harness of his horses at a certain point outside of the 
town, and their jingle heralded his arrival as he drove 
into the streets. There used to be strings of these 
wagons on the turnpike coming and going as far as you 
could see. 

"Passengers were carried in four-horse stage-coaches. 
There was always quite a bustle of excitement in the 
town when the coaches went around to the hotels 
gathering up passengers before leaving. The larger 
baggage was strapped on behind, and the smaller bag- 
gage was stowed under the driver's seat. It was natural 
that the drivers, moving about as they did, should be 
pretty well informed, and they certainly felt their im- 
portance. The coaches travelled day and night, but 
there were good taverns where the travellers could 
stop if they wanted to. You found a tavern once in 
ten miles. Relays of horses were kept at them, and at 
every one such of the passengers as were thirsty could 
get liquid refreshments while the horses were being 
changed. It was a rough kind of journeying, and the 
rocking of the coach became very tiresome if you were 
going a long distance. 

"Travelling on the canals or rivers was much pleas- 
anter. We had fine river boats that plied between here 
and Southern ports, and in the spring and fall a packet 
boat left every day. They were large boats with side- 
wheel paddles and carried a great deal of freight, and 
often were just laden with passengers. I've seen our 



1 1 8 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

wharves so full of freight you could hardly get along 
there. The low water of summer was a handicap to 
river travel, but we had boats light enough to float on 
dew, and those kept going. 

"We used to have rafts on the river then — lots of 
'em. Some were of sawed lumber, and some of logs. 
There'd be a little cabin of boards on each raft for the 
crew to live in. At night a raft would tie up to a tree 
on the bank. Traffic on the river also made use of 
keelboats and flatboats. The former were much like 
canal boats. In going upstream a long rope extended 
from the boat to a horse that walked along on the shore, 
or perhaps the towing was done by the crew. Where 
towing was not practical they made use of a sail, or 
resorted to poling. Such a boat would make one round 
trip a year to New Orleans. The freight charges were 
enormous, particularly for bringing sugar, molasses, 
and other Southern products up the river. 

"The flatboats were equipped with an oar at each 
side of the bow, and a steering oar at the stern. They 
carried stone and sand, hay, potatoes, cattle, every- 
thing. Often they were just oblong boxes of rough 
planks, so loosely fastened together that they could be 
knocked to pieces when they finished a down-river 
journey, and sold for lumber. You could stand on the 
bank and count a hundred boats and rafts in sight at 
the same time. 

"Yes, there've been great changes on the river within 
my recollection, and great changes here on the land, 



An Industrial Metropolis 119 

too. When I was a boy the city was all down to the 
point, and if you went back a mile or so you found 
farms and market gardens where now the millionaires' 
mansions stand. But I have n't a doubt that the 
people who lived in the comfortable old farmhouses 
were just as happy as the millionaires in their present- 
day palaces." 

For the most part, the smoky manufacturing villages 
and towns that are so numerous in the Pittsburg region 
are utterly devoid of sentiment and charm. But I 
discovered one exception. That was a little place 
named Economy a few miles down the Ohio. Here 
dwelt, until comparatively recently, a peculiar religious 
sect known as Harmonists or Economites. The sect 
was founded in Germany by George and Frederick 
Rapp about 1787, but its adherents were much harassed 
there by petty persecutions and presently emigrated to 
America. They made a settlement in Pennsylvania 
which they called Harmony, and from there they later 
moved to Indiana and built New Harmony. This in 
turn was abandoned in 1824 and they came to the 
vicinity of Pittsburg. At that time they numbered 
about five hundred. 

They taught that the condition of celibacy is most 
pleasing to God, that the coming of Christ and renova- 
tion of the world were near at hand, and that if people 
would follow the precepts of Christ they must hold 
their goods in common. As time went on they increased 
in wealth, but decreased in members. Not only did 



120 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

they have much property in real estate, but they had 
investments in coal mines, and controlled at Beaver 
Falls the largest cutlery manufactory in the United 
States. 

The village still presents in many respects its ancient 
Economite appearance. There are regular rows of 
simple brick houses, the great assembly hall, the 
charmingly quaint church with its massive tower, some 
of the old walled gardens, and several of the mills. 
Evidently the buildings were put up with memories of 
Germany in mind, and the result is an old-world village 
in our new-world surroundings. The houses are snug 
to the walks, and on the side toward the street their 
walls rise to a height of two stories, but a wooden leanto 
slants low down on the other side. No door breaks the 
street walls, for the houses turn their backs on the 
public ways, and you have to go through a gate and 
enter them from the garden. Thus the people avoided 
having their attention attracted by worldly scenes, and 
they tried to confine their meditations to things 
heavenly. 

A village acquaintance let me into the church. He 
knew where all the keys to the various doors were kept 
on dusty beams and in out-of-the way nooks and 
crannies, and I explored the edifice quite thoroughly. 
Last of all I climbed the narrow, gloomy stairways in 
the tower up to where the clock and the bells are, and 
then went out onto a little gallery whence I could look 
down on the spreading church roof and the village. On 



An Industrial Metropolis 121 

each side of the tower was a clock face equipped with a 
single pointer to roughly indicate the time. But this 
indefiniteness was ameliorated by the fact that the 
clock struck the quarter hours. Moreover, at twelve 
o'clock sharp, each mid-day, it let loose a peal that 
lasted for about three minutes — a clamor suggestive 
of an alarm of fire. This was the "dinner bell." 

When I was in the tower the clock had run down, 
and the weights that furnished the motive power hung 
inert at the end of the long ropes. The sexton was 
supposed to wind it up daily, but he had been called 
out of town the previous evening and had not yet 
returned. 

Across the road was the "Great House" in which had 
dwelt the leader of the sect. It was much like the other 
houses except that it covered more ground. Beyond 
it was a very large garden where there were grapevines, 
and a pretentious fountain, and a curious little stone 
hut or chapel. 

The village used to be much more verdant than it is 
now. On all the house walls there had been trellises to 
which grapevines clung, and the streets were lined with 
cherry trees which furnished fruit as well as shade. The 
grapevines have been neglected, and most of them are 
dead and gone; and the boys clambered about up in 
the cherry trees in quest of fruit and broke down the 
branches, so the authorities finally had the trees 
removed. 

"Before these people came here," one of the villagers 



122 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

said, "they lived in just such a village as this that 
they'd built and named New Harmony, in Indiana. 
At the head of the community was Father Rapp. He 
was a self-educated man who'd become a religious 
lunatic. Originally he was a poor weaver. The 
Harmonists did n't marry, and they would prove by 
what St. Paul taught in the Bible that marriage 
was n't desirable. I wonder what sort of a fellow St. 
Paul was. Probably nature had n't favored him with 
good looks. I guess he must have been goggle-eyed, 
splay-footed, humpbacked, and in general so ugly the 
women would n't look at him. Otherwise, he would n't 
have said such things as he did. But the Harmonists 
believed in his celibacy doctrine, and it was their idea 
that they ought to shun all the ordinary pleasures of 
life and pray unceasingly. 

"One time when Father Rapp had been praying 
all night there in their Indiana town he heard the 
sound of a trumpet, and he went out in the yard, and 
down came the angel Gabriel. Near the door was a 
rock, and the angel alighted on that, and he left the 
print of his foot in it. He must have come with his 
foot hot straight from heaven and with a good deal of 
force, or he would n't have made such an impression. 
That footprint has been there ever since. To the 
Harmonists it was sacred, and some would kiss it. 
They believed that if they continued in the ways they'd 
adopted, living abstemiously, and the men keeping 
clear of the women, that the angel Gabriel would return 




Th' old church at Econon.y 



An Industrial Metropolis 123 

and take them in his arms up to heaven so they'd 
escape the pangs of death. 

"They got their Indiana land for nothing, and they 
improved it and even acquired wealth, but a good many 
of 'em suffered from malaria, and some died. That 
made the people around them say, 'Ho, ho! thought 
you was n't going to die.' 

"Quite a number deserted, and after a while the rest 
sold out, packed up their goods on wagons, and come 
here to make a new start. They bought three thousand 
acres of land and a lot of cattle and sheep, and 
built big barns, and they had a saw mill^a grist mill, 
a cider mill — oh! they made the best cider I ever tasted. 
They were particular about the quality of whatever 
they made, either for their own use or to sell. Every- 
thing was done up in apple-pie order. They had a 
woolen mill and a cotton factory, and they raised 
grapes and made wine, and they grew mulberry 
trees, the foliage of which they fed to their silkworms, 
and they had a mill where the silk was woven into 
cloth. 

"The silk business was considerable of an industry 
with them, and they wore various silk garments of 
their own producing. On Sunday when they came out 
in all their glory the women would each have a big silk 
kerchief about their shoulders, and they had silk gowns, 
and quaint blue silk bonnets, and the men had silk 
trousers and coats. The fashions did n't change with 
them every year as they do with us now, and the clothes 



124 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

were all right till they wore out. A well-cared-for silk 
gown would last a woman all her life. 

"Father Rapp had a silk robe that he used to put on 
every evening and walk up and down his garden among 
the mulberry trees that grew there praying for the 
angel Gabriel to come and take him up to heaven. It 
was a very gorgeous gown of ruby velvet lined with 
pale blue silk. 

"Since Father Rapp died, the Great House in which 
he lived has been haunted. Strange noises are heard 
in it at night, and apparitions have been seen, and two 
Sisters of Charity who slept there had the bedclothes 
yanked off from them. One of its occupants, when he 
was dying, shrieked and yelled that a great treasure 
was buried in the cellar. However, perhaps the in- 
fluence that made him say so may have been just 
devilish; and yet a Spiritualist medium has said that 
he spoke only the truth, but that something dreadful 
would happen to anyone who knowingly dug in the 
cellar. If a person found the treasure by chance he 
would be all right. 

"The people were cheerful, comfortable, and kindly. 
They were old-fashioned and Dutch-like in appearance, 
and they clung to the use of the German language 
among themselves. The men and women went out 
and worked together in the fields or in the different 
mills, and they all did just as they were ordered. Their 
labor was not very arduous, and they stopped to rest 
when they got tired. But they were not always satisfied 



An Industrial Metropolis 125 

with the management of their superiors, and there was 
more or less heart-burning. 

"It was a frugal peasant community, and the people 
fared very simply. Twice a week rations were given 
out from the general supplies — wine, beer, and cider 
from the assembly hall cellar, and other things from 
the company store. They ate five times a day after 
the manner of the fatherland, beginning with breakfast 
at six in the morning and ending with supper at half- 
past seven. They had various feasts, and in the fall 
one great feast that lasted three or four days when they 
ate together in the big assembly hall. Their meals 
were not very sociable. Once I went to dinner in the 
house of the leader of the society, and I began talking 
just as I would anywhere else, but I did n't get any 
response, and then I noticed that the Father had 
stopped with his knife upright in one hand and fork in 
the other, and was looking at me viciously. 'Shut 
up!' he said in German, and I did so. It was their way 
to eat in silence, except for asking in a low voice for 
what they wanted, and to get through and get out. 

"The old village was perfectly charming — absolute 
order everywhere, and a sort of peacefulness brooding 
over it — a Sunday-go-to-meeting quiet. The women 
kept the houses scrubbed, and there were muslin sash 
curtains at the windows, and on the wide window-sills 
were flowers, especially primroses, that bloomed all 
winter. They were very careful and choice about 
everything. Neatness and cleanliness were universal. 



126 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

Even the streets were immaculate, and beyond the 
houses were such nice little gardens! 

"No one was allowed on the street after nine o'clock, 
and anyone caught later than that was arrested and 
taken before the trustees. Once a friend of mine came 
to the place on a late evening train, and he was halted 
by two night watchmen accompanied by a big dog. 
They were very gruff, and he was simply scared to 
death. The watchmen patroled the streets, and every 
hour of the night, beginning with nine, they stopped 
right at the church and called out, 'All's well, we wait 
for death!' 

"If they found any toughs or tramps they took them 
to a house set apart for that class of people, and an old 
couple lived there to take care of the house and of them. 
The vagrants were n't exactly welcome, yet such was 
the treatment they received that this was a favorite 
resort of theirs. It was against the rules for the vil- 
lagers to feed them at the houses; so they were com- 
pelled to go to their own hotel. There'd be forty or 
fifty of them some nights in seasons when the tramps 
were very thick. In the evening or in the morning 
you'd see the wayfarers sitting on benches along the 
house walls, and the old man and woman bringing out 
a big cup of coffee and a chunk of black bread to each 
man. After breakfast the old couple bid the tramps 
God speed and sent them on their way. 

"The Harmonists had a beautiful old hotel here. It 
was just such a hotel as you might find in a German 



An Industrial Metropolis 127 

village. Everything was neat and primitive, and the 
dining room floor was sprinkled with white sand. For 
three dollars a week you could get every imaginable 
comfort there. It's gone now. Unfortunately it was 
torn down by somebody who forgot himself. That 
was Billy Rice, a fellow who came here as a boy and 
was employed around the hotel at first as a hostler, and 
later as bar-keeper. He married a nice sort of girl who 
had money, and then he bought the hotel. 

When he pulled the hotel down it was with the idea 
of building something more pretentious, but he could n't 
get the cash. So he set up in business as a butcher in a 
little shop on his property, and lived in some rooms 
over the shop. Meanwhile he'd been growing very 
fond of whiskey until he nearly lived on it, and he 
began to spend more than his income and to be abusive 
to his wife. Still, he was n't a bad sort of fellow when 
he was sober. One day he came into the room where 
his wife was ironing and said he must have money and 
told her to get it from her mother. She refused to do 
so, and he deliberately took out a revolver and blew 
her head off. She fell, and her body lay under the 
ironing table. As for Billy, he got into bed and shot 
himself. There they found him seriously wounded. 
He was rushed to a hospital, but he only lived a few 
weeks, and I think he died there practically from the 
want of liquor. 

"Time went on and the Harmonists became few and 
old, and bedridden and forlorn. They could n't do 



128 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

their customary work, and many of them had to have 
caretakers. So at last they sold out and the society 
came to an end. 

"A little outside of the village they had a graveyard. 
Burials were made in very rough wooden coffins with 
no handles, and they'd just put a rope around the box 
and lower it into the grave. Then, when the leader 
said, 'Dust to dust, and ashes to ashes,' the people 
would drop flowers down on the coffin. Everybody 
brought a boquet, even if it was only a wizened little 
flower with a few bits of green. None of the graves 
were marked. The people tried to live as equals here 
on earth, and they chose to sleep as equals in the grave 
with no gravestones to suggest differences or to invite 
ostentation. Lately a sewer has been run through the 
graveyard, and inevitably it disturbed many of the 
grassgrown, unmarked graves." 

The Harmonists certainly made an interesting ex- 
periment in living, and some features of the social order 
they established are quite appealing. Their trials and 
disappointments were not without compensations, and 
I wonder which is the more to be envied — that serene 
little village of Economy in the time of its prosperity, 
or the strenuous city of Pittsburg with its mingled 
wealth and poverty. 

Notes. — Pittsburg is certainly not beautiful, but it is a chief 
industrial center of the continent, and a wonderful wealth pro- 
ducer. The reason for its supremacy in these respects is the fact 
that it is in the heart of one of the richest coal districts in the 



An Industrial Metropolis 129 

world, so that it has the advantage of cheap fuel for its manu- 
factories. 

Through the adjacent rivers more than 20,000 miles of inland 
navigation are open to the steamers of the city, and, owing to the 
enormous coal traffic, the tonnage of Pittsburg's river craft is 
greater than that of New York. 

As early as 1804 a line of stages was established between Phila- 
delphia and Pittsburg, a distance of 350 miles. The first railroad 
across the Alleghanies reached Pittsburg in 1847. 

A half day can be spent to advantage visiting one of the great 
steel works. As a contrast to the big, grimy manufactories along 
the rivers, one should see the palaces in the residence district on 
the heights. 

Pittsburg's right to the title of "the Smoky City" has been vindi- 
cated by the discovery that the average resident carries in his lungs 
a quarter of a pint of soot. 

Braddock, 7 miles up the Monongahela, deserves attention as 
the battleground where the British were so dreadfully defeated by 
the French and Indians. 

That charming old communistic village of Economy, 19 miles 
down the Ohio, should also be seen. 

Johnstown, 77 miles east of Pittsburg, is of interest because of 
the inundation that overwhelmed it on May 31st, 1889. It is an 
iron-making city at the junction of the Conemaugh and Stony 
Creek. The valleys here are deep and narrow, which explains the 
completeness of the catastrophe. Above Johnstown, 18 miles, was 
Conemaugh Lake, about 3 miles long and 1 mile broad. This was a 
fishing resort of a club of Pittsburg anglers. The waters were 
restrained by a dam 1,000 feet long, no feet high, 90 feet thick at 
the base, and 25 feet thick at the top. Violent rains filled the lake 
to overflowing, and about 3 o'clock that May afternoon a 300 foot 
gap was broken in the dam. The water swept down the valley in 
a mass a half mile broad and 40 feet high, carrying everything in its 
way. In 7 minutes it had reached Johnstown. A little below the 



130 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

city the mass of houses, trees, machinery and other wreckage was 
checked by a railway bridge. It caught fire and many persons, 
unable to free themselves from the debris, were burned to death. 
The estimated total of lives lost varies from 2,300 to 5,000. The 
property loss was at least £10,000,000. 



/i 




A coal village with a mountainous culm heap in the 
background 



VI 



A VALE OF ANTHRACITE 



IT was with some misgivings that I journeyed to the 
Lackawanna Valley. I feared the coal country 
would prove wholly black and forbidding, and the 
towns dubiously monotonous, and labor conditions 
sordid and depressing. My first pause was at Scranton, 
but that is a great business center, and though coal is 
being mined under and all about it, I preferred to get 
away to some smaller and more comprehensible places 
to the northward. 

Through the midst of the valley runs the Lackawanna 
River, a swift, inky stream, whose waters, in this 
mountain region, are no doubt naturally crystal pure, 
but are now so stained with coal washings that it might 
be a veritable stream of Hades. Where there should be 
yellow sandbars are dubious deposits of black, and the 
midstream rocks have caught unsightly masses of 
rotting railroad ties and other rubbish that is due to the 
presence of a busy and rather irresponsible hive of 
human industry along the banks. The sky, too, even 
when it is cloudless, nearly always has a murky, threat- 
ening aspect due to the smoke that fills the atmosphere. 
This smoke comes in part from the numerous breakers 
at the mouth of the mines, and in part from the engines 



132 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

on the railroad tracks that crisscross the valley in an 
intricate network. The trains of heavy coal cars, and 
the lighter trains on the narrow gauge roads from the 
mines moved hither and thither in apparently hopeless 
confusion, and wherever I went, the thunder of iron 
wheels on the tracks was always sounding in my ears. 

Very few trees are found in the valley, yet the great 
stumps that are still to be seen in places where the sur- 
face has not been torn up show that the land was 
heavily wooded at no very remote time. If a chestnut 
tree or a beech has by any chance been spared it is a 
treasure trove to the youngsters, and when the nuts 
ripen they assail it with sticks, and climb up and shake 
the branches. They feast on the nuts as they gather 
them, for the trees are too few, and the boys too many 
to allow the nut-gatherers to fill their pockets. 

The coal deposits are tapped along the sides of the 
valley, somewhat back from the stream, and there 
stand the giant breakers — lofty, sinister-looking struc- 
tures, with a wide-spreading base, but terracing upward 
to a small peak. The trestled tracks from the mines 
run to the very top, and a cable drags the loaded cars 
up the steep incline. Close beside each dingy, towering 
breaker is a pigmy engine-house with a row of stout 
metal smokestacks sticking up through the roof, and 
this is the center of an inferno of smoke and steam and 
gas. 

The loaded cars are dumped far up aloft, their con- 
tents are crushed, and the slate and sulphur-stained 



A Vale of Anthracite 133 

pieces are picked out by the breaker boys. A series of 
chutes carries all the material down to the ground level, 
and delivers the good coal into cars on the railroad 
tracks, and the refuse into much smaller narrow-gauge 
cars to be dragged by cable to the top of a vast black 
heap of culm, as it is called. Once on the crest of the 
culm pile, a mule is attached to the car, and it is dragged 
away to the farthest verge, and there its contents are 
released and slide down the declivity. 

These culm dumps are the most conspicuous feature 
of the valley landscapes. They loom huge and somber 
above everything else, and dwarf the loftiest breaker 
and the highest of the village church spires. It is sur- 
prising how small the men and mules on top appear as 
you look up at them from below. Some of these gloomy, 
steep-sided, barren mountains of coal waste are four or 
five hundred feet high, but they are not destined to be 
permanent. Most of the material in their soaring 
heights is burnable in the modern furnaces. A few of 
the piles have already been entirely worked over, and 
probably nine-tenths of what was in them was shipped 
away. 

On the lower edges of the dumps one often sees 
women at work rescuing some of the better coal that 
is mingled with the stony refuse. Most of these 
gleaners are elderly, but there are comely, vigorous 
young women, too, and occasional little girls. Now 
and then a woman will climb far up the slippery slides, 
with her skirts fluttering in the wind. Some carry 



134 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

a hammer, and some delve and claw among the frag- 
ments with a short-handled hoe or hook. In their 
opinion the pieces they hammer free from the slate, 
and the other fragments they glean, are just as good 
coal as they could buy from a dealer. They carry 
it to near-by homes in pails, and to the more dis- 
tant ones in bags. Ordinarily, the bags are trundled 
away on wheelbarrows, yet frequently an old woman 
will get a full, heavy bag on her back and stagger off 
with it. 

The dumps and the coal mine vicinity were by no 
means so desolute and lacking in human cheer as I had 
expected. Perhaps the oddest source of pleasure that 
I observed was the use of a dump as a sliding place. 
The material just there was finely broken, and two 
small negro boys with a sled would start at the top, 
one sitting and the other standing behind and clinging 
to the sitter's shoulders, and down they would come 
with a startling rush. It looked like a wild and reckless 
ride, but evidently their nerves were not at all shaken. 
They lived just beyond the farthermost outthrusting 
ridge of the irregular culm pile, and their little cabin 
home was quite a curiosity — a makeshift dwelling to 
which odds and ends picked up by chance had con- 
tributed largely. If one could judge by the number of 
children playing about the porch, it was thickly inhabi- 
ted. With the brushy woods close around, the house 
was not without a rude charm that was suggestive of 
the sunnv South. 



A Vale of Anthracite 135 

Few of the miners' homes that I saw were exactly 
squalid, yet a careless disregard for appearances seemed 
to be general. Little attention was given to securing 
shade trees, or to beautifying the premises with flowers 
and vines. Often there was unkemptness, yet not 
such a degree of it as would prove especially unhealthy. 
The people seemed hardy, and the children as a rule 
apparently had sound bodies and were attractively 
intelligent. The miners themselves, going homeward 
from work with their blackened hands, faces, and 
clothing, looked almost demoniac, but when the grime 
had been removed and they had changed their gar- 
ments they were much like other men. 

Workers recently from Europe are apt to hive to- 
gether unreasonably, not because they receive starva- 
tion wages, but because they have been used to that 
sort of crowding, or because they want to save every 
last penny in order to bring over their families. As 
soon as they get a thrifty start in the world they adopt 
a more generous mode of living. The laborers certainly 
have money to spend, for they are among the best 
patrons of the cheap shows, and they support an ex- 
cessive number of dubious saloons. Lawlessness often 
manifests itself in the mining towns, but it is seldom 
the recent arrivals who are the mischief-makers. No, 
most of the "deviltry" is attributed to young fellows 
of American birth. 

In the part of the valley where I spent the larger 
portion of my time the mountains to right and left were 



136 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

near and steep. Their raggedly wooded slopes were 
very stony, and even the land along the river had the 
same thin-soiled, rocky character. It never could have 
offered much encouragement to agriculture. Over the 
heights, however, in either direction is fertility. Never- 
theless, because of the coal, here is wealth and a dense 
population, while over there is comparative poverty 
and only scattered dwellers. The coal valley is the 
market for the latter, and there is much toilsome team- 
ing over the rugged ridges. One day I walked with a 
sturdy farmer who was on his way homeward trudging 
up the hill beside his team and stopping often to rest 
his horses. 

"This is a hard old mountain to go over," he said, 
"but the steepest, roughest part of the road in the whole 
seven miles that I have to go is right here as we're 
leaving the town. Do you see the cracks in the side- 
walk by this house we're passin'? That's caused by 
the ground settling. The railroad company that owns 
the coal mines had been robbing the pillars that were 
left to support the roof above the coal vein. They 
don't care nothin' if they let the whole thing drop. 
When they sell any land they only sell surface rights 
so they can do as they please underground, and a man 
puts up a house at his own risk. Often the house set- 
tles and racks, and one corner's up and another down 
so the doors won't shut. Oh! it warps 'em up in great 
shape. Every day or two you see in the paper that 
some house has settled. Last summer the ground 



A Vale of Anthracite 137 

caved under a man who was workin' in his garden and 
let him right down into a mine. In some places I've 
noticed houses tipped right sideways. They were so 
bad that the people in 'em had to leave. One night a 
house went down about twenty feet, and a stove inside 
was capsized, and the whole thing burned up. There's 
trouble from buildings settling on some of the best 
streets in Scranton. 

"Of course, the closter a vein is to the top of the 
surface and the thicker it is the more chance there is 
for trouble after the coal has been taken out. Even 
where big enough pillars are left, and they are not 
robbed, you are only safe for a while. The exposure 
to the air, and the action of water that finds its way 
down from the surface make the coal crumble, and 
pieces of the roof are always falling. But if the vein 
is down as deep as seventy-five or a hundred feet the 
vacant space fills up roughly without making a dis- 
turbance at the surface. 

"Now we're up the worst of the hill on more level 
ground, and just ahead is a place where the whole road 
has settled five feet. You can see cracks and ragged 
holes on either side there in the brush. The ground 
settles most in the spring when everything is soft. I'll 
take you down into a hollow near here to show you 
better what's happening." 

He turned off onto a grassy woodroad and left his 
horses standing under a tree. We were on a wild up- 
land where the scrubby forest growth showed the 



138 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

ravages of recent fires, and where the ground was 
nearly hidden by the crimson autumn glory of tangles 
of huckleberry bushes. Soon we reached the ravine, 
and my guide pointed out to me the effects of the work 
underground in shattering the bordering cliffs, making 
holes in the earth, and slanting the trees out of the 
perpendicular. In the depths of the glen was a stream 
dropping over the ledges and worrying along its bould- 
er-strewn channel with much fume and clamor. At 
one place it flowed over an outcropping of virgin 
coal that showed distinctly on either side of the hol- 
low. Probably it was just such a dark crumbling mass 
that first gave a hint of the fuel riches of this wilder- 
ness. 

When I was again back in the town descending the 
precipitous hill I stopped to speak with a corpulent 
old Irish woman who sat in the corner of her yard, just 
inside of the fence, hammering away at a heap of coal. 
She was reducing the big lumps to stove size. "This 
is the way it comes from the mine," she said. "It's 
awful dear if you buy it after it's made ready for your 
fire. I break a little every day, but the work is too 
hard for me." 

She pulled the old shawl she had on her shoulders 
closer about her, heaved a sigh, and looked out at me 
over her spectacles with exaggerated pathos from under 
the cowl-like brown cloth she wore wound around her 
head. After a moment's pause she asked, "Are you an 
agent, or are you a boss up at the tunnel?" 




"3 






A Vale of Anthracite 139 

I satisfied her as to that and mentioned that my home 
was in New England. 

"Yes," she said, "I know about New England. That 
was the first settled part of this counthry. I like to 
read in history about thim Pilgrims comin' across the 
ocean and of the hard times they had. It's intherestin'. 
I have fri'nds out in Boston. That is in New England. 
I've often heard tell of Boston, and I think I was near 
it once. My daughter had married, and I went to live 
with her in Connecticut at a place called Derby. But 
it was not nice there. Oh! I did n't like it at all. The 
wather was bad, and that made drunkards of 'em, you 
know. I could n't drink that Derby wather. But 
we have the grandest wather here. It tastes good, and 
it's soft and all right for washing. 

"This is a healthy place, too. We have pure air. 
But at Derby, Connecticut, I'd see so many complainin' 
of ager and malaria. They have two big rivers there, and 
a great many people were drowned. The people could 
get a living all right, but I'd see the women go off" 
workin' and the men idle at home. I did n't like that. 
House rent was awful dear there, and so was other 
things. I paid three dollars and a quarter for half a 
ton of coal, and you could put it all in three bags, and 
I had to pay twenty-five cents for a couple of little 
bundles of wood. 

"Well, I came back here after a while, and here I'll 
stay the rest of my days; but this is no cheap place 
either for buying most things. Pork is expensive, and 



140 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

so is other kinds of food. That's what they call the 
high cost of living. I like pork and cabbage. You bile 
the pork a little while; then you put the cabbage in 
the pot. Yes, that's what I like. Are potatoes dear 
where you live? They are here. Potatoes don't grow 
so productive in our gardens as they used to. The 
ground is too old or something. I think the mines soak 
away all the good from the land. But the Eyetalians 
here does have grand gardens; and they are not a bad 
sort of people. They fight a good deal among them- 
selves, but they don't bother the rest of us. 

"That's my old man just goin' in the gate. He's 
finished his day's work in the mines. He can't do 
heavy work any more, but they don't discharge him. 
He's been workin' for the company so long they think 
a lot of him, you know. They don't give him no special 
job, but just tell him to find something to do. So he 
opens doors for the mule cars to go through, and picks 
coal off" the tracks, and such things. He's a very in- 
dustrious old man. He says he'd be cold if he did n't 
keep goin'. 

"It's dirty work. You see how black they get. I 
s'pose it must be good for the soap factories. They 
wash up as soon as they get home, and change their 
clothes — what they call shifting 'em. Every week 
they have clean mine clothes, except the coat. That 
don't get very dirty because they don't keep it on while 
they're workin'. Their clothes are not so hard to wash 
as those of men who are in mills. The coal dust comes 



A Vale of Anthracite 141 

right out unless they've got ile on their clothes. They 
wear a lamp on the front of their caps, and sometimes 
they carry ile for it in one of their pockets and very 
likely a little of the ile leaks out or they spill it on them- 
selves. 

"I went into the mine once with my man long ago, 
but not so far that I could n't look back and see a 
little glimpse of daylight. He worked away, and by 
and by he says, 'Now I'll put off a little blast and let 
you hear it;' and bang it went. 

"I was scared. I thought I was gone. Everything 
shook and shook and shook. It shook so heavy and 
shook so hard it seemed like the whole earth was comin' 
down. I thought it was the last of me, and the world 
was at an end, and I says to myself, 'If I was a man I 
would n't be workin' in a mine.' 

"But the men who are used to it wouldn't work 
anywhere else. They can earn more than at most other 
jobs. We have silk mills around here, but they don't 
pay any wages at all. One good thing about mining is 
that it don't wear the men out. Generally their health 
is pretty good, but sometimes the dust gets down on 
their lungs and they take the miner's asthma and are 
short of wind, you know. When they have it bad they 
have to stop. They may take medicine to kind of ease 
them, but there's no cure for it. 

"Then, too, we have accidents in the mines. Yes, 
indeed. My son-in-law came in kilt to me, and my 
brother was kilt dead, and only five months between 



142 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

'em. But it's very seldom we have bad accidents now. 
Of course, they can't be helped once in a while. Acci- 
dents happen in every place — in the mines, and on the 
railroads, and around the water. There's no safe place 
to work unless it is in the stores, and I've heard that 
people get kilt there with the elevators." 

The old woman now got on her feet with considerable 
effort, shook the wrinkles and the dust out of her skirts 
and remarked that it was getting cold and she must 
go in, but she paused to ask me if I had seen the 
Forty Foot Falls up on the mountain. "People come 
clear from Philadelphia to see those falls," she said. 
"Philadelphia, that's a city — did n't you ever hear 
of it? 

"There's an Indian cave up on the mountain, too, 
but people are afraid to go in it. The Indians used to 
say that there was more gold around here than out 
West. They must have meant the coal. That cave is 
only three miles away, but we have great wild moun- 
tains here — oh dear! acres and acres of woods; I 
would n't care to go there." 

Farther down the hill was a rude little building that 
served as a grocer's storehouse. A man was busy inside 
putting things in order and mending some flour bags. 
I sat down in the doorway, and while he worked we 
talked. At first we commented on some little boys who 
were playing ball in the street watched by a bunch of 
smaller children that included a baby in a baby car- 
riage. They had a ragged old ball, and some nonde- 



A Vale of Anthracite 143 

script sticks served for bats. One of the liveliest play- 
ers was a poor fellow who had lost a leg. He used one 
of his crutches for a bat, and when he hit the ball or 
had struck at it three times he put the crutch to its 
intended use, and away he hobbled to the base with 
astonishing celerity. 

A drunken man staggered past, and the grocer's 
clerk exclaimed: "My! this would be a rich country if 
it was n't for the saloons; and if all the men were like 
me the saloon-keepers would have to go to work for a 
living. The saloons have a harvest time every day and 
every night, and if a customer don't have money they'll 
trust him, for it's well known that a man will pay his 
whiskey bill before he will any other. He'll buy drink 
whether work is slack or not and he'll generally keep 
good-natured while he's in the saloon half drunk, but 
when he comes home, if everything ain't just so he's 
ugly. 

"The people here are well off in one way — they 
don't any of 'em need to pay a cent for their fuel. Those 
that ain't lazy get it from the culm heaps. Some who 
can afford to buy picks all their coal. Yes, people with 
a pretty good bank account will go to the culm bank 
for their fuel supply. The more wealth they have the 
more they economize and try to make. There's cellars 
where you'd find enough coal to do 'em a couple of years. 
We used to be allowed to go to the dumps with wagons 
to bring away coal, but men got to make a business of 
it, so the company put a stop to that. These foreign 



144 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

women is great people to pick coal, and they back it 
home for the most part. 

"The culm piles are valuable, and a good share of 
what's in 'em can be broken up and sold. Nearly all 
coal has got more or less slate in it, but this boney coal, as 
we call it, that's in the dumps can be mixed with good 
coal, and one will sell the other. In the early days there 
was no sale for the finer coal, and they'd throw it away. 
This big dump on the edge of the town has been growing 
for forty years, and I dare say that in the bottom you'd 
find pea coal and chestnut — lots of it. Now they use 
down to buckwheat and birdseye sizes. 

"Besides getting fine coal, there's a chance to make 
a good bit here pickin' huckleberries. If there's a 
slack time in the mines during the berry season, the 
men go right out with the women and children. I've 
known a big family to make five dollars in a day. 
They'll be goin' up along the mountains at three o'clock 
in the mornin'. Late in the day you'll see 'em comin' 
back. Often a woman will have her berries in a pan 
such as is used to wash dishes in, and she'll carry that 
pan balanced on her head with a little cloth underneath 
to keep it from hurtin'. She has to come down some 
awful steep places, but she'll walk right along with her 
two hands folded. They sell the berries to a man here 
who's a flowerist — has a flower house you understand — 
and he ships 'em to the cities. He buys 'em by the 
quart, and sells 'em by weight. I guess he gets a little 
more measure that way. A quart will maybe make a 



A Vale of Anthracite 145 

quart and a half. Our mountains have been so cut off 
and burned over that huckleberries is about all they're 
good for, though once in a while someone brings down 
a backload of dead sticks for to kindle the fire." 

The work in the storehouse was now finished, the 
dusk of evening was thickening, and the squad of ball- 
players in the street had dispersed. I went with the 
grocer's clerk to the adjacent store where the lights had 
been lit. Just inside, only a few feet from the entrance, 
sat the proprietor, a heavy elderly man with his hat on 
his head and a cane in his hand. I thought he looked 
rather grim and crusty, but I presently observed that 
his face could light up with a pleasant smile, and I had no 
further doubts as to his being good-humored and kindly 
at heart. People were constantly dropping in to get 
groceries. Most of them were children sent by their 
mothers. The youngsters invariably came to an awed 
stop in front of the old man, and he called them by 
name and demanded what they wanted, and then he 
repeated the items of their requests to an alert young 
woman behind the counter. She served them and 
entered the charges in the little passbooks the children 
brought, and in a large store account book. The 
customers seemed never to pay cash, and I asked the 
grocer the reason. 

"It's the habit," he said. "The men get their wages 
twice a month, and the majority of 'em will hand most 
of the money to their women, who will come in and pay 
me. But mind you, they won't kill themselves hurry- 



146 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

ing to get here with it, or by the size of the load they 
bring. Many a one don't square up. I've been selling 
on credit for the last thirty-two years, and if I tell the 
slow ones that they must pay they are quick to give 
me a rap, and that's the thanks I get for trusting 'em. 
They'd crush my bones in the grave. Ah, yes! if I dun 
them they tell me to go where I don't want to go — tell 
me to go to the last place where I would want to go; 
and they name the place whether they know anything 
about it or not. Some move away and leave a dirty 
book behind them, and there are others I can't collect 
from unless I give the case to a lawyer; and if I do 
that there's very little comin' to me after he gets 
through." 

Just then a small redheaded boy came from outside 
and held the door half open while he looked in. The 
grocer ordered him to go away, and the boy paid no 
attention to this command. The old man shook his 
cane at the lad with no better result. "You'd better 
stand there yet awhile!" the storekeeper exclaimed, 
getting onto his feet and lurching belligerently toward 
the door. The boy vanished. 

"Give me some tobacco," the old man said to his 
clerk as he settled back into his chair. 

He filled and lit his pipe, and after a few puffs re- 
gained his equanimity. Then he turned to me and 
remarked: "When I came here in 1854 the valley was 
all woods and laurel. There were big trees everywhere 
— hemlock, pine, and ash — and you could build a house 




A miner and an above-ground friend 



A Vale of Anthracite 147 

out of one of them trees they were so large and so long. 
You'd be under the shade wherever you went, and you 
did n't need an umbrella in the hardest rairi that come, 
for the thick leaves overhead would keep the water off 
from you. We'd let our hogs run in the woods from 
April to November, and they'd take care of themselves 
— they would, sir. Our cows, too, could go where they 
pleased and be in no danger from the railroads. Now, 
good gracious! it's all railroads, you might say, here in 
the valley. The best of the trees was carried away to 
the sawmills, and afterward you could get no income 
from the land it was so poor, and a good deal of it was 
sold for taxes. 

"At first I worked for sixty-three cents a day — ten 
hours, too — ten long hours, but when the Civil War 
broke out wages boomed up. I'll tell you what miners 
get now. Two men work together — a miner and a 
laborer. The miner blasts the coal loose, and the other 
fellow loads it. If they are in a good place the miner 
will perhaps knock enough down in a couple of hours 
for the other to handle, and he's earned three and a 
half or four dollars. He used to go off home then, but 
now, for fear of accidents to the laborer, he has to stay 
till the loading is done. The laborer will earn close to 
three dollars, but there's times when they're working 
where the place is not so good, or they can't get cars 
to load. Then you may hear a man say he has n't 
made but a dollar that day. 

"One advantage of the job is that you are your own 



148 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

master. There's no boss standing over you. Besides, 
you are away from the cold in winter time, and away 
from the heat in summer time. But you have the dis- 
comfort of wet clothing. The water is dripping from 
the roof all the time onto your back. Maybe you 
would n't be in there ten minutes until you'd be like 
they'd kept puttin' the hose on you all day, but you 
don't mind that while you're busy. In winter, when a 
man comes out, his pants often freeze to his legs before 
he gets home. Very likely he'll stop in at a saloon and 
stay awhile by the stove, and drink a couple of glasses 
of beer. Then he's hot inside and out. When it's very 
warm in summer, and he comes up from the cool mine 
he has to sit down in the shade and get used to the 
change a little or he'd be sunstruck. 

"A miner is a miner all his life, and as a general thing 
he brings up his boys to do the same work. First the 
boys are put into the breakers, and from those they go 
into the mines. They are brought up to that one thing, 
and they think they could n't do anything else, and 
often they won't try. If a man can't get his special 
kind of a job he'll tramp the country through. 

"On the whole the people here are prosperous, and 
there's five times as many own their homes as there 
are renters; but when a miner has to support a big 
family he's got all he wants to do to keep his head above 
water with prices as they are nowadays." 

So I gathered from what the old grocer and others 
said, and from my own observation, that life among 



A Vale of Anthracite 149 

the anthracite workers is a mixture of cloud and sun- 
shine just as it is elsewhere. They are not satisfied, 
yet nevertheless there are no other workers with whom 
they would willingly change places. 

Notes. — Historically, the most interesting portion of the anthra- 
cite coal district is the Wyoming Valley. The largest town in the 
valley is Wilkes-Barre, named in honor of the two chief upholders 
of American liberty in Parliament. The name of the valley is de- 
rived from an Indian word that means "large plains." It applies to 
an expansion of the Susquehanna basin about 20 miles long and 4 
or 5 broad. Were it not for the coal this gentle valley would have a 
good deal of pastoral charm. 

Near Wilkes-Barre, in July, 1778, occurred one of the most 
harrowing of Indian massacres. A force of British troops and In- 
dians entered the valley, defeated the settlers, and the massacre 
followed. The British officers could not restrain their savage allies, 
who butchered some 300 men, women and children. A monument, 
four miles north of the town, on the opposite side of the river, marks 
the scene of the battle. Three miles farther on is Queen Esther's 
Rock, where the half-breed queen of the Senecas tomahawked 14 
defenceless prisoners. 

The original fireplace in which anthracite coal was first burned 
in 1808 is preserved at the old Fall House on Washington Street in 
Wilkes-Barre. Many relics of local Indian and pioneer life can 
be seen at the Wyoming Historical and Geological Society rooms. 
The height known as Giant's Despair, east of the city, is the scene 
of the annual hill-climb of the Wilkes-Barre Automobile Club. 
The valley has paved roads from end to end. 

A particularly fine scenic route is that from Wilkes-Barre to 
Elmira, N. Y., 109 miles. There are good dirt roads much of the 
way, but with some steep hills that require great care on the part of 
the motorist when the roadway is wet. 

The route to Scranton, 18 miles north, by way of Pittston, is 



150 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

through the heart of the Anthracite region and abounds in collieries 
and villages of foreign laborers. For much of the way the road is 
rough and poor. The town streets are narrow, and are crowded 
with children and animals, and there are frequent dangerous rail- 
road crossings. 



VII 



A FAMOUS BATTLEFIELD 



I WAS on my way to Gettysburg. An elderly man 
got in at one of the stops of the train and occupied 
a seat with me. He was garrulously inclined and 
soon was telling me of some of his varied experiences 
and opinions, but he had not discoursed long when he 
remarked : " If it's all the same to you I want to change 
places. I'll tell you why. We're all creatures of habit, 
and I chew tobacco. I want to sit next to the window 
so I can spit out. 

"See here, my friend," he continued as he settled 
down where I had been, "I make it a rule when I meet 
a better-looking man than myself to give him a lemon 
drop." 

He took a paper bag from his pocket, and I accepted 
a lemon drop. "I s'pose I've bought hundreds of pounds 
of 'em," he added. "Did you say you was goin' to 
Gettysburg? I fought there in the great three days' 
battle that began July first, 1863. Look at this," and 
he showed me a pension paper; "that's my name — 
Cap'n Eli Billings. And here's a picture of three of my 
grandsons. That smallest boy is named after me — he's 
a brick. They're all good boys, but I'm sorry to say 
they've got a craze to go to all the moving picture shows 



152 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

that come along. I approve of such shows when they're 
proper, but they give too many cowboy and Indian 
subjects. That ought to be stopped. It creates a dis- 
position to have revolvers, and I see my grandsons 
playing fighting and saying to each other, 'I'll shoot 
you. I'll kill you.' It's detrimental. 

"Speakin' of the war, I was in the whole of it right 
smack from the start. I enlisted the day after Sumter 
was fired on, and I served to the very end. More than 
a hundred days I was under fire, yet there was never a 
ball drew blood on me. I heard many of 'em pass near 
my head, and they went through my clothes in detach- 
ments. A minie ball goes 'Zip!' with the same sound as 
you make on a fiddle by giving the E string a pick and 
running your finger up on it; and the sound of a shell 
is as if it said: 

WHERE ARE YOU? 

Where are you? 
Where are you? 

"Where are you? . FOUND YOU!" 

That last is when it bursts. 

"I used to teach a music school, and I played a bass 
viol in the Methodist Church. Well, our division got 
to Gettysburg on the second day about seven o'clock 
in the morning. We marched into a field and had 
breakfast, and quite a good many done some washing 
and hung the things out to dry. We was lyin' around 



A Famous Battlefield 153 

takin' it easy when the long roll sounded. That meant 
to fall in and get ready to move. So we packed up and 
then double-quicked it to Little Round Top. From 
there we made three charges across the swampy Valley 
of Death and past the wild rocks of the Devil's Den. 
On one of the charges I came across Sam Ralston of 
our town goin' to the rear. 'Oh! Eli,' he says, 'our 
whole army is demoralized.' 

"'Sam,' I says, 'don't think it, just because you're 
demoralized.' 

"He was a notorious coward and was always dropping 
out of the ranks during a battle, if he did n't avoid it 
altogether by claimin' he was sick before it began. 

" I'll tell you a little joke. You know General Sher- 
man said, 'War is hell.' If that is so, what was us fellers 
that fought the battles? Why we was nothing more or 
less than the devil's imps. Sherman made a mistake. 

"After the war ended someone wrote to me to ask if 
I commanded a company in the battle of Gettysburg. 
I did n't know whether I did or not. I wa'n't thinkin' 
about that or about the fightin'. I did my duty, but 
the main thing that concerned me was to keep close to 
Jim Mellin. He had a grudge against me, and I was 
afraid he'd take advantage of the confusion of the battle 
to be revenged. So I made up my mind to be so near 
that I could grab him if he tried to shoot me. But I 
had no trouble at all with him, and at the end of our 
third charge he shook hands with me and said, 'Eli, 
did n't we drive 'em!' 



154 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

"This was the way his bad feeling toward me begun: 
I was promoted to be sergeant, and had to see that every 
man took his turn at squad duty, and one of the first 
things I did after my promotion was to detail Jim to be 
on campguard. He swore that he would n't. 'Look a' 
here,' I said, 'it'll go hard with you if you don't.' 

"'I don't care a hang,' says he, 'I won't mount 
guard.' 

"Course military is military, and I reported to the 
colonel. He had Jim tried by a court-martial, and says 
to him at the conclusion of it: 'You are under the 
sergeant's orders, and those orders must be obeyed. 
I sentence you to thirty days close confinement in the 
guard-house and to forfeit one month's pay.' 

"At the end of the thirty days I was sent to the guard- 
house to have Jim come and sign the payroll for the 
month he'd forfeited, but Jim said, 'I won't go with 
you, and I'll be blessed if you can take me.' 

"That stirred my ire. I went and got two men, and 
I had them come with me all armed and ready for 
business. As soon as we were in the guardhouse I said 
to 'em, 'This man is ordered to go and sign the payroll. 
If he don't go when I tell him to, put the bayonet right 
into him. You'll do it, too, or I'll report you.' Then I 
very calmly said, 'Jim, you go;' and he went. 

But he was mad and said he'd kill me, and I thought 
very likely he would if he got a good chance. That's a 
sample of the ugly side of war. Now, I'll give you a 
sample of the pleasant side. It's a little romance. 




An 'old smokehouse 



A Famous Battlefield 155 

While our army was here in Pennsylvania, me and five 
other fellers was given a day off and we went for a long 
walk out into the country. When we started back we 
conversed together about the chance of getting some- 
thing to eat at the houses along the road, for we was 
awful tired of hardtack it was so dry and so often had 
worms in it. I was chosen to stop at the next house, 
and the others were to come right along behind to sup- 
port me. Well, I rang the doorbell, and a nice young 
lady came to see who was there. My courage kind o' 
failed me, but I made her a military salute, and says, 
'Will you be so kind and condescending as to give us 
some-er-water to drink?' 

"I did n't have the nerve to ask for food. She 
brought us a pitcher of ice-water, and she was so 
friendly we all see that she'd have been glad to give us 
food if I'd only asked for it. Soon we went on, and by 
and by we passed over a hill, and found a picnic in 
progress close by the road in a grove. There was a 
bunch of older people in one place, and children in 
another, and they insisted we should stop and eat with 
them. We knew they would n't take, 'No,' from us, 
so we tried to excuse ourselves, and then went along 
with 'em. But each of the two parties wanted us, and 
finally I told the children that we'd only eat half enough 
with the older people, and come back and finish with 
them. They said they'd go along and tell us when we'd 
got half enough. A little girl named Maggie — a black- 
eyed, smart little thing, nine years old — kept with 



156 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

me, and after I'd eaten a while she begun to ask if I 
had n't got half enough. 'No,' I said, 'I'm pretty 
hungry.' 

"At last, however, we soldiers went and sat down 
with the children to finish our feast. When I'd eaten 
about all I wanted I said to myself, 'I'll get out of this 
trundlebed trash.' But as I was rising Maggie flung 
her arms round my neck and made me stay. I got 
acquainted with her folks at the picnic, and they were 
very cordial, and once or twice in the days that followed 
I was at their home. Later I had typhoid fever, and 
while I was recovering I went and stayed with them. I 
married when the war was over, and pretty soon after- 
ward my wife and I went to visit Maggie's folks. But 
Maggie, who'd always been specially friendly with me, 
would n't hardly speak to either of us. I asked her 
mother what was the matter, and she said it was be- 
cause of my wife. Yes, sir, back in the war that little 
girl of nine had fallen in love with the soldier of twenty- 
three. Time passed on and she married and went to 
live in New York. But I've always had a certain feeling 
of affection for her, and in late years we've occasionally 
written to each other. Now I'm a widower, and if 
Maggie was a widow woman, and she would have me, 
I would n't marry any other woman on the face of the 
earth. But the last time she wrote she said her head 
troubled her terribly and she was sick and tired of 
takin' medicine. Her letters have stopped, and I think 
she's dead." 



A Famous Battlefield 157 

My companion reached his destination about this 
time, and we parted, and a little later I arrived at 
Gettysburg. The town is a prosperous county-seat of 
four thousand inhabitants — about the same number 
it had in wartime. It has changed in the intervening 
years, yet much of the old still remains, and it has a 
serenity and quaintness that are very charming. In 
the business center is an open market square. Thither 
the farmers resort in the early morning on the three 
market days of the week, back their wagons up to the 
sidewalks, display their bags and boxes of fruits and 
vegetables and crates of chickens and dicker with the 
townspeople who hover about examining and purchas- 
ing. All the streets are lined with trees, which, with 
their suggestion of cooling shade in the heat of summer, 
give the place a touch of the idyllic. The houses are 
very apt to be snug to the uneven brick walks, and el- 
bow each other quite closely. Porches, steps, and little 
porticos extend out from the front of the residences onto 
the walks, and the people sit on them in summer even- 
ings. They make an interesting architectural feature, 
and they promote comfort and sociability. Most of 
the houses had gardens behind them, and though it 
was mid-October there had as yet been no frost, and 
they were full of green growing things and a wealth of 
gay blossoms. Little alleys branched off from the main 
streets, and appealed agreeably to the eye with their 
whitewashed walls and fences contrasting with the 
vines and flowers and foliage that overhung them. 



158 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

Many of the town buildings date back to war days, and 
among these are several built of logs. One log structure 
is a negro store. Its commercial character was made 
apparent by a few lonesome tomatoes and cabbages on 
a stand outside, and by a liberal display of advertising 
posters tacked up on the whitewashed logs. Here and 
there I observed holes in the logs made by bullets in 
that long-gone battle. I thought the holes seemed 
rather large, but the proprietor said that was the result 
of the boys digging out the bullets with their jack- 
knive. 

Many another town building bears the scars of battle, 
yet not one was intentionally harmed or seriously dam- 
aged except an outlying tavern. "Some Rebel sharp- 
shooters got into that," my informant said, "and they 
were picking off the Union officers. So the Federals 
trained their cannon on it and smashed it all to pieces. 
I'll tell you what the conditions were here. Before the 
war this was a great carriage-building town, and our 
trade was in the South. We'd sell and take notes, and 
the payment was dependent on the cotton and tobacco. 
If either crop was a failure the notes would go over for 
another year. The war meant ruin. Our market was 
gone, and the money due us could n't be collected. 
My father got sixty-five dollars out of about twenty- 
six thousand. 

"When Lee came marching up in this direction the 
goods in the stores were loaded on wagons and carted 
off, and some of the women and children struck out for 



A Famous Battlefield 159 

safety along the Baltimore Pike, hoofing it and taking 
with them what they could carry. 

"A good many thought the rebels could n't drive 
our soldiers, but they did the first day of the battle, 
and as our troops retreated through the town they 
hollered, 'Citizens, to your cellars!' That was in the 
afternoon. In the earlier part of the day lots of people 
got up on the housetops to watch the fighting. 

"An hour after it began every public building in the 
place was a hospital, and soon every barn and shed 
likewise, and the town women were kept busy cooking 
for the wounded. 

"I worked in a store. The proprietors were Quakers, 
and therefore non-combatants, and they had gone 
away. Food was scarce, but I took some salt bacon, 
chopped it in small pieces and mixed it up with corn 
flour for flapjacks. Those flapjacks were a rather 
palatable article. And I toasted a little rye, and poured 
some molasses into a pan and sort of burnt it, and then 
I stirred the rice and molasses up together, and after 
I'd put some condensed milk to it I had pretty fair 
coffee. 

"When there was heavy cannonading I'd go to the 
cellar, and at night I slept on the floor downstairs. 
Hundreds of houses had balls go through their windows 
and roofs, and once in a while a shell that was shot over 
the town fell short. Yet of all the townspeople just one 
young woman was killed. Her name was Jennie Wade, 
and its a curious fact that she was the only outspoken 



160 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

rebel in Gettysburg. Jennie was a bright, pretty girl, 
but because her father was a Virginian, she sided with 
his state, and from the beginning of the war she 
would n't go out and sing with the other girls for our 
soldiers when they were marching through the town. 
As a result she was ostracized. During the battle she 
was taking care of her sister who was sick. They had a 
little meal hidden away somewhere, and while she was 
bending over mixing up some in the bread trough that 
she had put in a chair, a bullet came through the door, 
struck her in the back, and killed her. 

In the course of time, after the war, all the states 
were putting up monuments to their troops that were 
engaged in the battle. As it happened, no Iowa troops 
fought at Gettysburg, and the people there were not 
altogether pleased at the prospect of not having their 
monument like the rest. Meanwhile, Jennie Wade's 
sister become head of an important Iowa Woman's 
organization, and the project was hatched of honoring 
this sister by putting up a monument to Jennie. They'd 
got the impression somehow that Jennie was a heroine, 
and that she went out on the battlefield to assist the 
wounded with water, and was killed while baking bread 
for the soldiers. So sentiment was worked up, and a 
monument was contracted for that represented her 
as a sort of angel of mercy with several canteens hung 
from her shoulders. Of course there was quite a cele- 
bration when the monument was brought here and set 
up, and Gettysburg was in a predicament. But we 



A Famous Battlefield 161 

did n't let the truth get the better of our courtesy, and 
the newspapers and every one kept quiet." 

The house in which Jennie Wade met her death has 
been preserved and appears much as it did in war time. 
It is a story and a half structure of brick. Two of the 
lower rooms are open to the public and are full of battle 
relics and souvenirs. More interesting than anything 
else is the door still in use through which the fatal ball 
passed. Bullets picked up on the battlefield were 
prominent among the souvenirs for sale. "We find 
more or less in our gardens every year," the caretaker 
said, "but most of 'em come from ploughed farm fields. 
After a rain is the best time to find 'em. The dirt gets 
washed off, and the bullets look like bluish lumps of 
earth. The boys go out in their gum boots to pick 'em 
up, and men go, too — lots of 'em. You see 'em walking 
slowly along looking down at the ground, and a stranger 
would wonder what they was about. The owners don't 
like to have 'em tramping there it beats the ground 
down so hard. They sell the bullets to the souvenir 
shops." 

The severest and most critical fighting took place 
only a short distance southward out of the town, and 
when I walked thither I found the region as a whole 
had the aspect of a fertile, well-tilled farming country. 
At intervals there were groups of whitewashed farm 
buildings that contrasted pleasantly with the crimson 
and gold of the tree foliage. The land was mildly 
rolling, except for a few rocky uplifts like Little and 



162 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

Big Roundtop, but on the western horizon were blue 
lines of mountains. All over the field of action are 
monuments varying from the small and inexpensive 
to the imposing structure erected by the state of Penn- 
sylvania, with its tablets containing the names of more 
than thirty thousand state troops who were engaged 
in the battle, and costing one hundred and fifty thous- 
and dollars. Some are graceful and beautiful, but many 
are commonplace, and the bronze or stone figures are 
not infrequently of the scarecrow order — that is, they 
are theatrical in their supposedly heroic poses rather 
than convincingly human. Numerous cannon are 
placed at the vantage points where the batteries were 
in the fight, and there are earth breastworks and stone 
fences that figured in the conflict. The most interesting 
house on the battlefield is the little two room log cabin 
that Meade occupied as his headquarters. 

Slender framework lookout towers have been erected 
at various points, but it is more satisfactory and natural 
to view the scene from the boulder-strewn height of 
Little Round Top where some of the fiercest fighting 
occurred. There I talked with one of the veteran 
guardians of the battlefield, and he pointed out the 
Valley of Death and the Devil's Den, and he indicated 
the Bloody Angle on Cemetery Ridge where the Rebel- 
lion reached its flood tide when Pickett made his 
disastrous charge up the long gentle slope. "And over 
yonder," he said, "is where Longstreet licked the wind 
out of Sickles, who'd disobeyed orders by failing to 




The Devil's De 



A Famous Battlefield 163 

stop on the battleline. He thought he could beat the 
rebels, and he went out with both flanks in the air. One 
of his legs was shot away, and he nearly got our whole 
army defeated. Yes, he lost his leg, but he saved his 
bacon. A good deal of talk was made about his per- 
formance, and it was only the kindness of Lincoln's 
heart that saved him from a court martial." 

A party of sightseers passed near us in charge of a 
professional guide. My companion spoke rather 
scoffingly of the information the guide was reeling off. 
"Most of those fellows are ignoramuses, "he affirmed. 
"They are careless, or they exaggerate in order to make 
what they say interesting. Day after day they repeat 
the same story in the same sing-song fashion. They 
start with it, and they go through to the finish whether 
you want to hear it or not. You can't stop 'em. They 
talk you to death. 

"We have a hundred thousand visitors a year. Some 
of 'em come scattering, and some come in big parties 
on excursions. They require watching because so 
many of 'em kind o' want to get a-hold of something 
to carry away. If we let 'em alone they'd get every 
monument there is here, fragment by fragment, and I 
don't know but they'd take Little Round Top, too. 
You see that statue?" 

He pointed to a bronze effigy of General Warren 
standing a little out of plumb on a great flat boulder. 
"Once we found the spurs had been filed off, and again 
that the end of the saber was gone. The statue has 



164 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

been repaired and a sign has been put up forbidding 
people to get onto the rock. Yet they seem bound to 
climb up there, and I have to warn them off. The rock 
is shelly on one side, and often I'll hear a little tapping, 
and I'll go there and find some one has got a stone and 
is trying to knock a piece loose. Lots of 'em have a 
hankering to carry off a piece of the Den rocks, and 
every now and then we ketch a feller tryin' to scratch 
his name on the rocks. They used to write their names 
on these lookout towers when they were first built. 
The fools had their names and everything all over the 
towers, and we had to put up notices." 

When I had retraced my steps from the battlefield I 
went out from the town eastward to where Rock Creek 
loiters through the lowlands. Here was an ancient 
stone bridge that climbed over the stream in a succes- 
sion of arches, high in the middle, and low on either side. 

Close by, in a wet nook that had recently been 
mowed with a scythe, was an old farmer poking the 
grass into piles. I accosted him, and we soon v/ere 
talking about the great battle which so overshadows 
all other events in the region. 

"As soon as we heard that the rebels were cominS 
he said, "there was a powerful excitement through 
here. You bet there was! and nearly everyone was 
goin' off with their horses to get 'em across the Sus- 
quehanna, about forty miles away. Out where I lived, 
quite a distance east of the town, we had a neighbor, 
formerly of Maryland, named Jacob Brown. He said: 



A Famous Battlefield 165 

"I ain't goin' to move my horses. I'll just tell the 
Rebels I'm from Maryland and that they can examine 
the records and prove the truth of what I say.' But 
the rebels took his three horses without giving him a 
chance to prove he was a Maryland man. Jacob 
would n't put confidence in no soldiers after that. 

"Some of the troops stopped on his place and started 
their campfires. 'There goes my rails,' he says. 'If 
only one or two men was doin' it I'd talk to 'em, but 
there's a whole army; so what can I do?' 

"He was a big stout man, and once I heard him make 
a brag at a muster on the drill field north of the town 
that he could lick any man under the sun. Well, he 
was about three parts in whiskey or perhaps he 
would n't have been so loud about it. He juked 
around in the crowd makin' his brag until a little man 
named Murch jumped in front of him and said, 'You're 
a blame liar;' and at it they went. They fought a good 
while and neither of 'em said 'Ouch!' But at last 
Murch got Bailey down on the ground under him. He 
pounded him well and made him take back his state- 
ment about bein' able to lick any man under the sun. 

"The three days of the Gettysburg battle was an 
anxious time for the older people, but I was young then. 
I know I slept all right. It did n't bother me any even 
when the fightin' ran on into the middle of the night. 
One day I dumb up in a clump of chestnut trees and 
watched the battle from a distance. 

"People ask me if I was in the fight at Gettysburg, 



1 66 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

and I say, 'No, but I was just where the bullets flew 
thick and fast.' 

"'And did you get hit?' they say. 
''There never a ball touched me,' I say. 'I was 
where the bullets flew thick and fast, but not until three 
days after the battle.'" 

I have mentioned the heroine of Gettysburg. The 
battle also produced a local town hero. This was John 
Burns, an elderly, old-fashioned shoemaker and con- 
stable, who got out his gun and went forth into the 
ranks to fight for his country. His story is not, however, 
universally accepted as fact. "He was a regular coward, 
that man was," one citizen informed me. "As con- 
stable, if he had a hard case he got some one else to 
discharge his duties. Some time after the great fight, 
he was showing a senator from Ohio around the field, 
and the senator says, 'You were in the battle, wa'n't 
you ? ' 

"'No,' Burns says. 

'"Why, yes you was,' says the senator, and they 
fixed up a fancy story between 'em." 

This illustrates the uncertainties of even recent 
history. I quote the words of another townsman to 
give what is probably a more accurate view of John 
Burns. He said: "There's a couple of lunatics here in 
this place who spread that story about Burns not being 
in the battle, and they did it out of pure cussedness. 
It's a blame lie that he did n't fight. He was erratic, 
but he had courage all right, and when he set his head 



A Famous Battlefield 167 

you could n't stop him. In his early days he drank a 
good deal, but later he became a sort of temperance 
fanatic. In the poems that have been written about 
him he's represented as going to the battle in an antique 
yellow vest and a blue swallow-tail coat with great gilt 
buttons on it. That's poetic licence. He was no such 
gay romantic figure. The facts are that he wore just 
ordinary clothes with an old linen duster over 'em. On 
his head he had a bell-crowned black felt hat. 

"Perhaps you've heard of poisoned bullets being 
used in the battle. Oh thunder! that's all tommy-rot. 
You'll find in the base of certain bullets a zinc rivet, 
and a lot of these roosters claim that when a man was 
hit the rivet separated from the rest of the bullet and 
let loose some poison. The truth is it was simply a 
device for keeping the guns clean. Every tenth bullet 
had that rivet, and the discharge flattened it a little and 
made it extend enough beyond the edges of the lead to 
clean the barrel as it went out. 

"Another thing that people talk folderol about is 
Meade's inaction after his victory. They say he ought 
to have annihilated Lee. But the two armies were very 
evenly matched. If Meade had done the attacking here 
at Gettysburg he'd have been licked out of his boots. 
After the battle it would n't have been wise to follow 
Lee closely because he knew the mountain passes by 
which he retreated much better than Meade did. Be- 
sides, Meade was hampered by a lot of old maids and 
grandmothers down there in Washington. How can 



1 68 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

you expect a board of strategy, studying maps in the 
government offices, far from the field of action, would 
have any value? They ought to have had their blamed 
heads blown off. They gave the men in the field no 
power, and again and again let 'em get defeated while 
waiting for the strategy board's orders. There's where 
Grant had the advantage of his predecessors. He 
would n't be dictated to by a board of inferior and 
timid officers at a distance." 

Notes. — Gettysburg is only 7 miles from the boundary between 
Pennsylvania and Maryland, which marked the northern limit of 
slavery before the war. The town itself is interestingly quaint, and 
the adjacent battlefield was the scene of what is regarded as the 
chief contest of the Civil War — the turning-point of the Rebellion. 
The struggle was between 80,000 Union troops and 73,000 Con- 
federates. In no other battle of the war were as large numbers 
actually engaged. The Union loss in killed, wounded, and missing 
was 23,000, the Confederate loss, 20,000. 

On the southern borders of the town is a national cemetery, at 
the dedication of which Lincoln made the famous 20 line address 
which is considered his most immortal utterance. Beyond the 
cemetery is the portion of the battlefield that was most hotly con- 
tested, including Little Round Top, the Valley of Death, the Devil's 
Den, and the Bloody Angle. A good walker can visit all the more 
important points comfortably on foot, but many will prefer to hire 
carriages or to take advantage of a trolley line that traverses the 
battleground. Everywhere on its 25 square miles are monuments 
— over 400 of them in all, and fully #7,000,000 have been expended 
on them and the grounds. Probably no other battlefield in the 
world has been marked with such care and completeness. 

The main motor routes out of Gettysburg are these: North to 
Harrisburg, 38 miles, most of the way a fair road; east to Phila- 











The haymaker 



A Famous Battlefield 169 

delphia, 118 miles, roads both very good and very bad; southeast 
to Baltimore, 54 miles, mostly good roads; south to Washington, 
78 miles, fair road; southwest to Hagerstown, 34 miles, over a stone 
road. Nearly all the highways are tollroads, and the interruptions 
to pay toll are pretty frequent on some of them. 

An attractive route from Harrisburg is westerly up the beautiful 
valley of the Blue Juniata. The road is bad in places. 

Philadelphia abounds in features of great interest, and the brief- 
est sojourn there should include visits to Independence Hall, 
Franklin's grave, the Betsey Ross House, Fairmount Park, and to 
the city hall, which is the largest municipal building in the world 
and cost over #20,000,000. 

Bryn Mawr with its famous girl's college is 10 miles west of Phila- 
delphia. Bryn Mawr is Welsh for "great hill." At 22 miles on this 
route, a little beyond Norristown, the road to the left leads to Valley 
Forge, 4 miles, Washington's headquarters in the winter of 1777- 
8. At Pottstown on this route, 39 miles, is a wonderful group of 
rocks, known as "Ringing Rocks," which give forth a musical sound 
when struck. 



VIII 



THE WATER GAP AND BEYOND 

I HAD seen pictures of the Delaware Water Gap, I 
had read of its beauty, yet I had wandered into 
many out of the way nooks and corners of our 
country from the Atlantic to the Pacific before I visited 
this easily accessible and famous Water Gap. It is 
almost due west from New York City on the Delaware 
River which forms the boundary line between New 
Jersey and Pennsylvania. Here the stream, before 
escaping from the rough, broken country to the north 
and entering the gentle pastoral region to the south, 
encounters a bold mountain ridge, and passes through 
a narrow cleft, where rise on either side great gray 
cliffs, raggedly clad with trees. The scene is impressive, 
and the jagged savageness of the Gap itself is pleasantly 
relieved by the milder and better forested heights that 
are close at hand. Big wooden hotels crown the promi- 
nent view points, and the vicinity is a favorite summer 
resort. I preferred to seek a more rustic region, and 
after I had enjoyed loitering about the immediate 
neighborhood of the Gap for a time, I followed a wagon 
road on the Jersey shore northward along the stream. 
Soon I had left the hotels behind, and also the railroads, 
which take advantage of the Gap to slip through the 



The Water Gap and Beyond 171 

mountain barrier and then go on westward. Often the 
road I trod skirted the riverbank with only an inter- 
mittent screen of trees and bushes between it and the 
water, and I caught many an enchanting glimpse of the 
stream, and of high hills or serene mountain ranges 
dreaming in the distance. 

Among the wayside trees were frequent chestnuts 
with wide-spreading limbs and shaggy-barked trunks, 
and on the ground was a strewing of burs. As I was 
passing under one of these trees a chipmunk began to 
scold me, and to scurry around through the brush as 
if to frighten me by conveying the impression that he 
was a dozen times his" actual size. Then I observed 
that burs and nuts were dropping from aloft, and I 
fancied that the chipmunk on the ground had a con- 
federate in the tree who was busy throwing down nuts 
for him to gather. I secured a share of the toothsome 
woodland treasures for myself, in spite of the protests 
of the chipmunk in the adjacent brush, and resumed 
my walk, munching the nuts at my leisure from a 
pocket half filled. When my supply became depleted 
I found I could easily replenish it almost anywhere 
along the way. The road presently entered a fine 
stretch of woodland, tall-treed and damp, with a thick 
undergrowth of dark-foliaged rhododendrons. Fre- 
quent brooks came plashing down rocky ravines from 
the hills, and this wilderness voice of the waters was 
almost the only sound that broke the silence. Once I 
saw a group of deer hastening ghostlike through the 



172 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

leafage, and as soon as their flitting forms vanished 
loneliness reigned once more. 

After a time I emerged among farm fields, but always 
as I went on the woodland was not far away. Late in 
the afternoon I was overtaken by the mail-carrier, a 
thin, hook-nosed ancient, with long gray hair hanging 
about his stooping shoulders. He had an open buggy 
drawn by a big, bony, black horse, and as there was 
room for a passenger and I was getting footweary I 
arranged to ride with him to the next village. It was a 
somewhat jerky journey, for he stopped at every house 
to leave a little mail bag, which he either hung on the 
dooryard fence, or thrust into a box fastened on a post. 
Once he drove into a yard and asked a man there if he 
had any lard to sell. 

"Yes, we got a little," the man said. 

"How much d'ye tax for it?" the mail-carrier ques- 
tioned. 

"Oh, the goin' price, whatever 'tis," the farmer 
replied. 

They discussed the lard and various other topics, ad- 
dressing each other by their first names, and I learned 
that my companion's name was Isaiah. "I sell con- 
siderable produce during a season," he said when we 
resumed our journey. "The hotels down around the 
Gap are good customers, and I always carry a load 
when I start from up here in the country. I'm ashamed 
to tell it, but since the first of April there hain't been a 
Sunday when I did n't have to put in my time getting 



The Water Gap and Beyond 173 

sweet corn, eggs, and such things. But I'm obliged to 
make a living somehow." 

I asked if the house we had just left was an old Dutch 
dwelling. It was a spreading structure of stone shad- 
owed by tall trees. At the rear was a long and broad 
piazza, and at the front was a porch with a settee on 
either side suggestive of tranquil evening loitering. 

"Yes, that's a Dutch house all right," Isaiah said, 
"and it was built way back in Colonial times. We're 
all Dutch through here. 

"D'ye see that big field of buckwheat up on the 
hillside? The grain is all reaped and stacked and ready 
for the threshing machine. That field is a part of 
Hiram Robock's farm, but he's only been living on it 
for the last two or three years. Now he's got sick of 
it, and a few days ago he moved back to Newark where 
he come from. Well, it was like this — he did n't git 
along with his neighbors. He wa'n't very sociable, and 
he thought they was too inquisitive about his business, 
and too much inclined to trespass. You see when a 
man here needs to use a stick of timber he goes up on 
the mountain, and if he don't find it handy on his own 
land he goes somewheres else on land that lies next to his 
and gets what he wants. We all do that way, and 
nobody cares; but Hiram thought it was stealing, and 
he made a row. 

"His buckwheat had n't been cut when he moved 
away, and his neighbors got quite anxious because it 
looked to them as if he was goin' to let that buckwheat 



174 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

go to waste. They thought he must be crazy. They 
were right about his intentions. He wa'n't goin' to 
bother with the buckwheat, and I went to him and 
made a bargain to harvest it to halves. We raise a 
good deal of buckwheat around here, and all through 
the winter we have buckwheat cakes for breakfast 
every morning. Oh, we can beat the city people all to 
hollow on makin' buckwheat cakes." 

My companion talked with considerable animation, 
and he often gestured with an upward, outward throw 
of his hands, and he emphasized the good points in his 
discourse by giving me a hunch with his shoulder. 
Presently, in response to a question of his, I told him 
that I was from Massachusetts. 

"Do you know Dr. Prout of Boston?" he at once 
asked. "He's a specialist on stomick troubles, and 
he's helped me wonderful. Until 'bout six years ago 
I'd been a well man all my life. I'd hired out on a farm 
at that time and was workin' in oats. I remember I 
was talkin' with the woman of the house after dinner, 
and she said: 'I've never knowed you to lay down like 
other men to take a noon spell. Don't you never get 
tired?' 

"There come up a shower in the afternoon, and I 
was goin' to the house when suddently I begun belching 
up gas. 'What under the sun ails me?' I says. I was 
fairly blind, and I went and sot down on the stoop. 
But I got worse instead of better and liked to 'a' 
choked to death. One of the other men helped me into 



The Water Gap and Beyond 175 

the house and went for the doctor, who relieved me 
some, so that the next day I was out and around. But 
I was too sick to work. I doctored with him all winter, 
and wa'n't improvin' a bit. I had nervous prostration, 
you know. It was just as if death was staring me right 
in the face. I can't describe it to you. Dr. Prout's 
advertisements was in the paper, and I decided to try 
him. I told the man I'd been doctorin' with, of my 
intentions, and he said, 'I don't think much of these 
advertising doctors. They just take your money and 
don't cure you.' 

''That's a little the way of the local doctors, too,' 
I says. 'You pledged me your word of honor that you 
was goin' to do suthin' to cure me, and here I am.' 

"I told you that in good faith,' he says, 'but your 
trouble is more stubborner than I expected.' 

'"You was on a wild goose chase all the time,' I says. 

"So I wrote to Dr. Prout and told him how I was 
afflicted. After that we had considerable correspond- 
ence, and his portrait was right on the corner of every 
letter he wrote. In his first letter he asked, 'What 
does the local doctors pronounce your trouble to be?' 

"I replied that they said I had a weak stomick, and 
I described my feelin's and symptoms. He wrote back 
that he had diagonized my case, and I had catarrh of 
the stomick, and that the inside of the stomick was 
covered with a thick mucus. 'We must kill the germs 
of that;' he said, 'and I can guarantee you a perma- 
nent cure; but it will perhaps require a five month's 



176 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

treatment, and the charge would be nine dollars a 
month.' 

"I got the medicine from him, and I had n't taken 
it no time at all when I began to be better, and at the 
end of five months I was well." 

Now we were entering a village. It was a chaotic 
little place with what was known as "the mountain" 
rising easterly, and a high hill on the west, and right 
through the midst of the hamlet ran a swift, noisy 
stream. The valley road was here crossed by another, 
and near the meeting of the ways was a store, a hotel, 
a gristmill, and a church. The store was neatly painted, 
and in good repair, and had a mild aspect of prosperity. 
In front of the hotel across the way hung a somewhat 
pretentious sign, but the building was now a tenement 
occupied by two families. It had been years since the 
wheels had turned in the gloomy gristmill, and the 
barnlike little church was pastorless and seldom used. 
In the village were perhaps a dozen homes. Most of 
them were distinctly humble, and often they were 
forlornly so. The yards and fields were inclosed by 
staggering nondescript fences. Every home had its 
ordorous hogpen, and this was very apt to be next to 
the road where the passer could neither avoid the view 
of its filth nor help inhaling some of its aroma. Along 
either side of the narrow village ways, among the weeds 
and stones, it seemed to be convenient to leave the 
farm wagons, and other weatherworn vehicles, some 
entirely past use; and for variety there were mingled 



The Water Gap and Beyond 177 

with them woodpiles, old wheels, broken mowing- 
machines, and similar rubbish. 

With the help of a ceremonious introduction from 
Isaiah I engaged lodging at the storekeeper's, and then 
I went for a ramble about the hamlet in the evening 
dusk. I found its quaint picturesqueness quite appeal- 
ing. There was even a wellsweep at one of the homes 
still in use, and this harmonized very agreeably with 
the sunbonneted women and rudely clothed men. 

The storekeeper's dwelling and place of business were 
both under one roof, and after eating supper in the 
kitchen I stepped into the adjacent store where a few 
dim lamps were burning. A box stove occupied the 
center of the apartment, and near it was a long bench. 
I took possession of a lone chair, and chatted with the 
men who dropped in from time to time. Most of them 
settled down on the bench to stay for the evening, 
and when that would hold no more they perched on the 
counters and on boxes of goods. One man, after feeling 
of the stove to make sure there was no fire in it, sat 
down on that. Some had resorted to the store to get 
their mail, some to trade, others merely to loaf and 
gossip. One of them was a stutterer who seemed to 
try to overcome his defect by speaking very loud. A 
dog had come tagging along at the heels of the man who 
sat on the stove, and when the creature saw that his 
master was going to linger he curled up and went to 
sleep. At a convenient spot on the floor was a pan with 
a little sawdust in it. Some of the men were smoking, 



178 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

some were chewing, but they all, whether using tobacco 
or not, spit at the pan. Their marksmanship was not 
very good. If it had been I fear the pan would have 
overflowed. 

A woman brought in a bag of chestnuts. The store- 
keeper weighed them and said, "Eleven pounds, fifty- 
five cents. What'll you have?" 

She asked for some coffee and a few other small items, 
and remarked that the coffee she bought last did n't 
seem as good as what she'd been getting. 

"It's what I have on my own table," the storekeeper 
responded, "and I don't see any difference. Maybe 
you used skim milk in it." 

He emptied the bag behind a counter on the floor. 
"I shall be glad when the chestnut season is over," he 
said, "and I get these out of here. I'm tired of walkin' 
over 'em, and of having the grubs crawl around. I'm 
obliged to spread 'em or they'd heat. There's quite a 
number of bushels here now." 

"This is a good year for chestnuts," a man on the 
bench remarked. "It don't take long to go out and 
fill one of them air big pails." 

"How many can you pick up in a day if they're right 
thick?" another asked. 

"A bushel," the first man replied. 

"Well, if you did," the other said, "you'd have to 
hustle and pick up all the time." 

"It don't pay to wait till all the chestnuts fall them- 
selves," the storekeeper said, "because the leaves come 



The Water Gap and Beyond 179 

down, too, and the nuts are hidden. As soon as the 
burs are open good you want to climb up in the branches 
with a pole and lick the burs off." 

''I'd rather get out on the limbs and jar the burs off 
with an ax," was the comment of a man whom the 
others addressed as Jase. 

"No, don't do that," the storekeeper said, "or you'll 
bruise the bark and injure the trees. But whipping a 
tree and keeping your foothold ain't easy. It's too 
risky a job for me. My neck is so long I believe I could 
tie a knot in it, and the chances would be that I'd break 
it if I made a slip. One time my brother was beating 
off burs, and he fell and cut his head open bad. He hit 
a stone, and no wonder. There's nothing but stones 
round this country. You put your shoe down on one 
or more at every footstep." 

"It's likely pretty soon that we won't get no more 
chestnuts," Jase observed. "I think this 'ere chestnut 
tree blight is goin' to clean up all the trees of that sort 
on our mountain." 

A man came in eating a raw turnip. He wore a 
faded felt hat that had lost its ribbon and fitted over his 
head like an extinguisher. His other clothing, and 
even his beard and face had a faded hue also. 

"Set down here, Bill," one of the men said, making 
room for him on the bench. "You ought not to be 
eatin' raw turnips. It's only three weeks since you 
got out of the Trenton Horspital." 

"Turnips won't hurt me none," Bill responded. "I 



180 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

kin eat anything now; and I'm hungry all the time. 
They kind o' starve you at the horspital. For two days 
before they operate they don't feed you at all, and your 
stomick gits flat as a board. You don't have much 
appetite for a while afterward, but I tell you, when you 
begin to walk around, you want some grub. The food 
was good, but there wa'n't enough of it. There'd be 
a little meat, and a little cabbage and potato, and little 
messes of several other things, and I could n't hardly 
eat some of the stuff it was so darn sweet. Course 
they would n't want to give you a swill pail full, but 
I thought they might have given me more than they 
did. Just as soon as the doctor let me out of the 
horspital I went over to a butcher's shop and got me 
fifteen cents' worth of boiled ham. Gorry! that was 
fine. 

"I didn't like the eggs there at the horspital. 
They'd been in cold storage. I kin tell a cold storage 
egg with my eyes shut. People that say they're just 
as good as fresh eggs don't know what they're talkin' 
about. Such eggs ain't first-class, and neither is cream- 
ery butter." 

"But creamery butter brings a better price than 
homemade," the storekeeper said. "The public knows 
it's at least half way decent, and they're not sure about 
the other. I buy and sell butter that the farmers bring 
in here, and some of it is fierce. By gee! I've handled 
some rotten butter. You could n't hire me to eat it 
myself." 



The Water Gap and Beyond 181 

"My dad went to a horspital in New York once," 
the man on the stone said, "and they kep' delayin' and 
delayin' and not havin' any operation. Finally he 
asked the doctor if he could go out for a while, and the 
doctor told him he could if he'd promise to come back. 
'Yes,' Pap say, 'I will come back.' 

"But he did n't want to pay out no more money for 
board at a horspital where they wa'n't doin' nothin' 
for him, and so he got fixed up by an outside doctor, 
who did such a good job that Pap was around all right 
in a little while, and for years afterward he could beat 
any man in this country dancin' a jig." 

"It costs something to go to a horspital," Bill 
affirmed. "If you have a private room they sock it to 
you like the Old Harry. Everything costs high nowa- 
days. They told me in Trenton that the carpenters 
git three dollars and a half a day, and only work eight 
hours, and not at all on Saturday afternoon. That 
kind o' thing is goin' to ruin this country in time. 

"I was lookin' out o' the window one day there and 
saw an airship. You would n't git me to ride in one 
of 'em for a million dollars. But I'd like to have an 
auto. They say autos'll be cheap as wheelbarrows after 
a few years. You know bicycles used to be a luxury. 
Now they ain't fashionable no more, but are kind o' 
gone by. I have an idea it'll be the same with autos, 
and common people kin have 'em as well as the 
wealthy." 

At times I had difficulty in catching what Bill said, 



1 82 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

for he had a thick-tonged way of speaking, and when 
he had to struggle with a thought more than commonly 
profound he would lean over with his elbows on his 
knees and run his fingers up under his hat into his 
tangled hair, and his muffled voice would go down 
toward his cowhide boots. I made some remark to the 
effect that airships and automobiles both had a long 
list of fatal accidents charged up to them, and that I 
had been glad to ride into the village with the mail- 
carrier. 

"You 'n' me are a good deal alike," Bill commented. 
"I'd rather go safe than fast any day." 

"Did Isaiah sing you one of his songs?" the occupant 
of the stove asked. "He composes 'em himself. He's 
got just one tune, but he's made up a good many sets 
of words, and he thinks he's quite a singer." 

"Isaiah has to make a long hard trip every day," 
Bill said. "This is a mountainious country and it ain't 
easy to git to any big town or to the railroad. That's 
where we're handicapped when it comes to marketing 
the stuff from our farms, and this year we're extra bad 
off in a money way because the weather has been too 
dry for things to grow good. We had a May drouth 
that cut the hay crop, and a drouth in August that just 
cooked the corn and everything like that. I ginerally 
have hay to sell. Las' year I stacked or put in the barn 
fifty ton. I keep a number o' head o' cow and they'll 
eat all I got this season. There won't be nawthin left 
by the time they can go to pasture in the spring." 



The Water Gap and Beyond 183 

"'Bout our worst road is the one over the mountain, 
ain't it Jase?" the storekeeper said. 

"Yes," Jase agreed, "it's pretty darn steep, I tell 
you, but in the summer I drawed twenty-two hundred 
up it with that old Sally horse of mine." 

"There's ten thousand railroad ties wanted from 
here next winter," one of the men said. "We'll raft 
'em down to the Gap in the spring, I s'pose. When my 
father was young rafting on the Delaware was quite a 
business. Every raft had to have a steersman and three 
other men. They each had an oar near one of the 
corners, and they had to keep workin' the oars a good 
deal of the time so the raft would drift along properly. 
The men would make trip after trip in the spring and 
fall when there was plenty of water. They'd go down 
on the rafts and come back on the stagecoaches. Any 
farmer along shore who had an eddy near his house 
where the rafts could tie up had a chance to make 
money. The raftsmen would pay well for lodging and 
food, and they had to have a little something strong, 
you know. Many of the rafts were run clear to Trenton. 
There's some pretty dangerous places on the river when 
the water is a little low, and sometimes a raft would 
git stove up in a rocky rapids. That's a time when the 
men needed to keep their wits about 'em. If they 
were thrown into the water and got scairt they'd 
sure drown. Foul Rift is a bad place. That's where 
the Lehigh joins the Delaware, and unless you butt 
right into the cross current you're carried over agin' 



184 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

the Jersey shore. Oh! you've got to keep your eyes 
skint there. 

"My land won't furnish many ties on account of 
that fire a few years ago. It was an April fire that 
started in the night. Early the next morning it could 
easily have been put out. Only a little bit of place had 
been burnt over, but as the fire was smudging in the 
wet swale where it could n't do much damage we paid 
no attention to it. There the wind got behind the fire 
and drove it right up the mountain faster'n a man 
could run. In some places there was down timber, and 
in other places the woods had been lumbered off and 
the brush lay thick. When the fire struck those it 
swept everything pretty near, and often burnt down 
into the turf three or four feet deep. Lots of young 
chestnuts are still standing dead and bare that was 
killed then. We been drawing them dry poles down 
ever since as we needed 'em for firewood. The ground 
that was burned over is covered with wintergreens 
now." 

"We got a good many maple trees up on our place," 
Bill said. "When I was a boy we used to tap 'em and 
make sugar, but that takes a power of work. It don't 
pay." 

"Tony's in the jug," Jase remarked. "They got 
him locked up for twenty days. He had a little rumpus 
with his wife and used a stick of firewood on her, and 
she used another on him. Then she went and had him 
arrested." 



The Water Gap and Beyond 185 

"They could n't 'a' missed hittin' every time they 
struck," one of the listeners said. "She's so big 
around," and he stretched his arms to form an impres- 
sive circle; "and Tony looks like a beer kag." 

"After they'd taken him to jail," Jase said, "she 
went to see him and stood a-talkin' to him through a 
window. She asked him to come home with her and 
help husk corn; but he says; 'I won't go today. I 
need to rest, but I'll go tomorrer."' 

A woman who was buying some calico of the store- 
keeper turned to the group of men and said: "I think 
Tony's wife is an old crank. You would n't 'a' ketched 
me goin' to see my husband after I'd got him locked up." 

"I don't believe they get very good grub at the jail," 
the ever-hungry Bill said. "But then, long as you don't 
git in no trouble you don't have to go there." 

"Well b-b-boys," the stammerer said, "it's m-m-most 
nine o'clock, and I want to git some m-m-medicine to 
break up a cold before this sh-sh-shebang closes." 

"I c'n give you some quinine pills," the storekeeper 
said. 

"What good are pills?" Jase said. "They're all 
made of buckwheat flour." 

But the storekeeper supplied his customer with 
something from a closet in a rear corner and turned 
out one of the lights as a signal that it was closing 
time. The men got on their feet from bench and 
counters and the stove, each made a final spit in the 
direction of the pan of sawdust, and off they shambled. 



1 86 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

The next day was Sunday. It was a day of loafing 
and visiting, but once in a while a customer dropped 
in at the store and made a purchase. Most of the men 
wore their old clothes, and these were often marvelously 
patched, ragged, and shabby. They would gather 
about one of the wagons in the street, adjust their 
limbs or bodies on or against it, and then talk as the 
spirit moved; or they would chat at some gateway or 
barnyard fence, or on a home porch. 

In the early dawn I had heard the sound of axes and 
knew the people were cutting up firewood with which 
to get breakfast. Practically all of them brought a 
little jag at a time from the mountain and threw it off 
in front of the house by the roadside and cut it up as 
it was needed day by day. Some, however, spent a 
little of the Sunday leisure in chopping up more than 
usual. Bevies of little pigs ran about the roadways 
rooting and investigating, and there were cows wander- 
ing and browsing where they chose. 

When I looked from the kitchen window of my 
lodging place, after breakfast, I observed signs of life 
about a large old house adjoining. It was a somewhat 
dilapidated building, and certain of its window sashes 
lacked so much glass that they had been boarded up. 
The most noticeable decoration of the structure was a 
great hornet's nest under the peak of the gable. On 
the previous day the house had been vacant, but a 
family had moved in from another village house during 
the night. A mule was grazing in the yard, and a dog 





The old wellszveep 



The Water Gap and Beyond 187 

was hitched to a clothesline along which the restraining 
leash slipped and gave him a limited amount of liberty. 
At the rear door was a platform and a pump, and one 
at a time the members of the household scrubbed their 
hands and faces there in a washdish. The family in- 
cluded two or three bewhiskered men, a frowsy old 
woman with a corncob pipe almost constantly in her 
mouth, a young woman, and a barefooted little girl. 

"That old woman looks brown as her pipe, don't 
she?" the storekeeper said. "There's a few other old 
ladies roundabout who smoke, but the habit ain't com- 
mon. This country is pretty well civilized. See, that 
woman is in the front room now cleaning a window and 
still smokin'. That's her daughter cleaning the other 
window. She'd be a pretty rosy lookin' woman if she 
was dressed up. There are the men comin' in the gate. 
They've got their hog and are drivin' it along hitched 
by the hind leg. I wonder how they got it across the 
bridge. Pigs are awful mean about crossin' a bridge. 
Often you have to take right hold and get 'em over by 
main strength. 

"These people ain't got cows or chickens or anything 
like that, and they don't cultivate 'any land. They 
have to depend on day wages for their living. Their 
home, until last year, was over in Pennsylvania in the 
scrub oak barrens. That's a peculiar region, and it 
begins not far back from the Delaware River. It's 
just a dreary level of little oaks that don't get much 
higher than six feet, but there are spots where pine, 



1 88 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

chestnut, and hickory grow. Every fall of the year the 
natives let the fire run through so as to have pasturage 
for their cows. Mostly the cows browse on the tender 
new sprouts that start up from the roots of the oaks. 

There's no fences, and the hogs and cattle run in the 
woods. You might think that the creatures belonging 
to different families would get mixed up, but the 
housen are so far apart that I guess the cattle never 
get together. The buildings are of logs. Big families 
are the rule, and yet very likely the house will have 
only one room downstairs, and the ceiling of that room 
is the log crosspieces and loose floor boards of the loft 
above. It's a wonder they don't freeze in winter, but 
they seem to come out all right in the spring. They 
trap and hunt and fish, and they have little garden 
patches. Whenever they get an unusual supply of food 
they eat it all up at one time. It's either a feast 
or a famine with them. If anyone kills a hog all 
the neighbors borrow some of the pork and return it 
when they kill. Each family keeps an old horse, or a 
mule, or a yoke of oxen; and now and then they haul 
out some railroad ties, or perhaps they cut a little batch 
of hoop poles and shave 'em and take 'em to town. In 
exchange they git some tobacker and a sack of flour 
and a few other things and feel rich. The old women 
all smoke, and their teeth are as black as that stove — 
what there is left of 'em. 

"I suppose these neighbors of ours think this place 
has about all the advantages anyone need want. But 



The Water Gap and Beyond 189 

I don't care to spend my life here. There's no chance 
for variety and amusement, and we have only a poor 
little primary school for my children to attend. Each 
year we have a green teacher. We can't keep one a 
second year or get one that's had experience because 
the salary is so small and it's so inconvenient getting 
here. Sometimes a local girl applies for the job, and 
then you run up against all sorts of prejudices. There 
was a case here a few years ago where the girl was all 
right, but she had the majority of the school board 
against her. I and three other fellers contributed two 
and a half apiece, and I folded up a nice ten dollar bill, 
put it in an envelope, and went to see one of the oppos- 
ing men on the board. I says, 'It's worth ten dollars 
to you to vote for that girl,' and I give him the envelope. 
The girl got the school, and it was that ten dollar bill 
what done it. She'd be doin' housework today if she 
had n't had that start. As it is, she's a very successful 
teacher who's now in a first-class position." 

"I'm not wanting to stay any more than he is," Mrs. 
Storekeeper said. "He's away a good deal, and I have 
to wait on customers besides doing my own work. In 
winter it's worst, for then there's loafers hanging around 
the store all the time, and I get so sick and tired of 'em 
I don't know what to do." 

"Well, but you have a chance to hear all the news, 
don't you?" her husband said. 

"I wouldn't object to that," she said, "if they 
did n't tell the same thing over and over. There's 



190 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

Bill — ever since he came home from the hospital I've 
heard him tell about his operation until I'm ready to 
stop my ears and run. Bill's as proud over that opera- 
tion as a nigger with a new shirt." 

"I'll say this for our people," the storekeeper re- 
marked — "they're generally industrious. In summer 
they're up at half-past four, and they work after supper 
till about dark, then sit around a little while and get 
off" early to bed. Six o'clock is getting-up time in 
winter. During hot weather they rest in the middle of 
the day from eleven to two. The girls all learn to milk, 
and it's the women that do the milking on most farms. 

"Nearly every family takes a local weekly, but they 
don't take any dailies or general periodicals with the 
exception of a farm paper that one man subscribes for. 
They don't have much ambition to see the world. It's 
no great journey to New York or Philadelphia, and yet 
very few feel they can afford any such luxury, even if 
they're well-to-do, which, as a rule, they're not. Some 
have mortgages on their places, and more would have, 
but I tell you, mister, a farm won't mortgage for much 
when the land is goin' down in value as it is here. How- 
ever, you can't judge people's poverty by the clothes 
they wear. Style don't bother us much in this region. 
I know a man who you might think was a beggar or 
pauper. He's 'bout as rough a lookin' old piece as there 
is around, but he owns many a farm. Lots of poor 
men have had more comforts than he's ever had. His 
wife goes barefoot. I saw her the other day watching 



The Water Gap and Beyond 191 

her cows that she'd got hoppled and was letting feed 
along the road. She was a tough-lookin' specimen. 

"Eventually I don't believe there'll be any village 
left here. The old people die, and the young people 
won't stay. I'm goin' to sell out and leave soon, and 
I'll never come back, not even to be buried. Our 
cemetery is too forbidding a spot for any one to want 
to go to, alive or dead. It's overgrown with blackberry 
briers, bushes, and weeds, and the groundhogs dig 
holes in the graves and scratch out the bones. Hundreds 
of people have been buried there whose graves were only 
marked by a plank set up with perhaps the initials cut 
on it. Of course the wood soon decayed, and now no 
one knows where the graves are." 

As the day advanced the sky became solidly gloomed 
with clouds, and a foggy moisture began to fall. When 
I presently went for a walk it was a sober, diminished 
world I had about me, and after I left the village the 
silence was almost oppressive. Not a breath of air was 
stirring, and there was only the drip of waterdrops 
from the trees, the rustling of an occasional brook, and 
now and then the lonely twitter of some little bird. The 
weather, and the wet slippery ground did not encourage 
me to ramble far, and I soon returned to the hamlet. 

On the vine-draped porch of one of the humbler 
homes were two men and an elderly woman. I paused 
to ask them why every field and yard in the place was 
fenced, and the woman replied: "If it wa'n't for the 
fences the cows that run around loose would come right 



192 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

into our houses. I dassen't go off away from the house 
and leave a gate or barndoor open, and I have to keep 
the barn shut up tight all through the summer with the 
horse sweating away inside." 

"Here, want an apple?" one of the men said, offering 
me a beauty that he took from his pocket. "Apples 
are so plenty this year they ain't worth nothin'. We 
shuck ours right off and sold 'em for cider." 

"There's Isaac's ducks down here on the millpond," 
the other man remarked. 

"You don't tell me," the woman said, and she 
stepped out to the edge of the porch and looked to 
assure herself. 

Across the road was a brook, and a little above was 
a dam and a small pond on which we could see several 
ducks paddling about. 

"You would n't think that little stream over there 
would do any damage," the woman observed, "but 
I can remember once when it flooded half the village. 
Must have been 'bout this time of year, along in the 
fall. There'd been awful heavy rains, and a pond above 
here busted. When the flood swept through it was 
pretty near morning, and some of the people here in 
town had n't got up yet. The water tore a great gulley 
along this side of the road, and undermined a house 
just below us. There was a man into it, and he was 
asleep. They had to hound him out. He might not 
have escaped if the back of the house had n't been 
against higher ground. Well, he made out to git his 



The Water Gap and Beyond 193 

pants on, and that was about all, I guess; and no sooner 
had he left the house than it went right down all to 
smash. Another house was partly wrecked. It sot so 
slanting after the flood was over you could hardly 
walk across the floor. That flood was forty years ago, 
wa'n't it Dick?" 

"Must 'a' been as much as that," Dick replied. 
"I'm forty-six; and they say I was quite a little chunk 
at the time, but I can't seem to recall anything about 
it." 

"Dick," the woman said, "I want you to move them 
rattlesnakes out of my weave-room. I've got to work 
in there; and you take them skunk-skins out, too. 
They don't smell good." 

Dick went to a door at the far end of the piazza and 
entered a dingy little room which contained a rusty 
stove and a rude loom, and much else that had been 
thrust in there for convenience. On the loom was a 
partly woven rag carpet. Nearly everyone in the 
region saved their carpet rags, and this woman did quite 
a business in weaving them. From amongst the litter 
Dick picked up a box about fifteen inches square, with 
a pane of glass fastened on top, and brought it out on 
the piazza. Inside were three big rattlesnakes. He 
reached up to a crosspiece overhead and took down a 
pair of wooden tongs. Then he slid the glass back, 
gripped a snake just behind its head, and pulled it 
forth, writhing and showing its fangs and rattling 
ominously. 



194 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

"Look out; your tongs might slip," the woman 
cautioned. 

But Dick was careful, and after exhibiting the 
monster for a few minutes he restored it to the box. 
They make nice belts," he said. "I git a couple of dollars 
a hide. When I go lookin' for 'em I carry a smaller 
box. They ain't very numerous, and like enough I 
might go half a dozen times and not git one. They 
like warm sunshiny weather. Then I find 'em in the 
fields and around stone walls up on the side of the 
mountain. A while ago one was found right here in 
the village and it bit a dog. The poison made him 
sick — you bet it did, and his head swelled up big as a 
water-pail." 

While we were talking, Bill, the man who had been 
to the hospital, joined us, and soon we all went into 
the kitchen and sat down. "These two men are 
brothers," Bill said to me, "but they don't look no 
more alike than a dog and a sheep." 

Then turning to them, he said; "That was a pretty 
good p'rade at Newton las' week wa'n't it? My! what 
a crowd! The automobiles was goin' all the time on 
the streets, and every stoop way up in the buildings 
stood full of people. I don't know where they all 
come from. Lots of money was left there that day. 
B'gosh, if I had it all I don't think I'd need to work 
any more. I guess every man there spent much as a 
dollar." 

"I liked the music," the woman said. "My good 





Housework 



The Water Gap and Beyond 195 

gracious! they had the bands from everywhere around, 
and fed 'em all free." 

"Did you see the big drum?" Dick asked. "Must 
have been pretty near four foot across. The drummer 
understood his business. By golly! if he could n't 
use his arms! They played the band, sir, up till ten 
o'clock, when the last train left. People from here had 
to drive over the mountain. There'd been rain the 
night before; so the mud was deep, and it was awful 
nasty goin'." 

"Bill," the woman said, "I want you to look at this 
picture," and she wiped the dust off a faded, rudely 
framed photograph and handed it to him. 

It showed the village schoolhouse with the children 
seated on a low pile of wood beside the building. "That 
was made when I went to school," Bill said, "and here's 
me right in the middle. I ain't much bigger'n a big 
rabbit. There used to be forty or fifty children went 
in those days." 

"When I was a girl," the woman said, "I lived 
farther up the valley and went to a stone schoolhouse 
that they called the little stone jug. We mostly had 
men teachers. They were hired for three months, and 
paid ten dollars a month, and they would board 
round. A man would teach for three months on the 
money that was raised in the taxes, and then perhaps 
he'd go through the deestrict and git signers who'd 
agree to pay him so much a head to have the school 
another three months. There's men I knowed who 



196 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

teached steady till they were fifty or sixty years old — 
made a business of it. I remember one woman, too, 
who was at it nearly all her life. She went from one 
deestrict to another, and they could n't down her. 
She was smart, but as she got older she wa'n't up-to- 
date enough. She was like a minister — he gits behind 
the door a little, and they want some one younger. 

" In my time every scholar had to find his own books. 
Now they're found for 'em. I never got to go to school 
such an awful sight, but I know I had an Elementary 
Spelling Book. The schoolbooks hain't near as easy 
as they used to be. I see that the spelling books now 
have the pronounciation into 'em besides just the 
words, and the children have to learn how to talk high- 
toned. Some of the new notions ain't sensible. 
George's kids are learning to spell cow and such words, 
and they don't know their letters. How can they git 
along that way? We used to have to behave pretty 
good. The master had a big twisted hickory, and when 
a boy would n't mind he'd take that and give him a 
lickin'." 

"Nowadays," Bill said, "if the children do anything, 
the teacher talks to 'em and let's 'em go, and they do 
it again directly; or she makes 'em stand up on the 
floor, and what do they care for that? But Lord God! 
in my own time I've seen children ruled till I bet their 
hands was sore next day." 

"I hear you're goin' to take some of your sheep to 
market tomorrow," Dick said. 



The Water Gap and Beyond 197 

"Yes," Bill responded, "if the weather's good. Have 
you seen them of Ormy's? His lambs are older'n mine, 
but mine are bigger'n hisn are, they've growed so fast. 
That's the trouble with these extra early lambs — they 
don't grow, and besides you have to set up nights and 
fool around with 'em or the cold weather'd kill 'em. 
The other day that buck of mine that I been keepin' 
tethered near the house got loose. The children was 
playin' in the road, and how they did scatter when they 
see him comin'!" 

"That 'ar sheep come clean down here past our 
hogyard," the woman said." I was workin' at the wood- 
pile cuttin' some wood, and I got over the fence. He 
went in the dooryard and knocked Dick endways. 
Buck was just a-makin' to come at him again; but 
Dick got up and slammed him with a board and sent 
him down the road a-sailin'." 

"He butted me off my feet once in the spring," Bill 
observed, "and I caught him by the leg and pounded 
him with a stone. I give him a good trimmin' down. 
Since that time he don't bother me. He'll stand and 
shake his head and look at me through the fence — 
'Baa!' but that's all." 

When I returned to the store, dinner was ready. In- 
cluded among those who gathered about the table was 
the village schoolma'a'm. She was quite youthful and 
shy, and seemed more like a pupil than a teacher. I 
noticed that she helped with the lighter housework. 
Probably she paid a lower rate for her board in conse- 



198 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

quence. The storekeeper jokingly remarked that she 
already had a beau. "Girls of courting age are about 
as scarce as white mice around here," he said. "The 
same fellow that was goin' with the last teacher is goin' 
with this one. The other teacher, after she left, turned 
him down. He felt pretty bad, but he wa'n't heart- 
broken, and soon as this one come he was right onto 
his job. He calls on her, and takes her for a drive now 
and then, and if she goes home over Sunday or on a 
vacation he'll take her to the station and meet her there 
when she comes back. 

But the young people don't have the advantages 
they used to have for courting, now that there's nothin' 
doin' at the church. Last summer a minister vol- 
unteered to come and preach every other Sunday, and 
he had to drive from a town eight miles away. Hardly 
anyone went, and yet fifteen years ago we had services 
regularly, and there was good-sized congregations. 
People would come three or four miles from all around 
and hitch their teams to tieposts in the yard there at 
the church. Every year we had Protracted Meetings 
when there'd be services in the evening right along for 
a spell. I was always glad when the dominie an- 
nounced 'em, because I knew I'd have a sporty good 
time with the girls. The dominie generally tried to 
strike a time in the early fall when there was a full 
moon, but 'twould have suited me better to have it a 
little dark. There was one fellow who, after meetin', 
when he was takin' his girl to where she lived, always 



The Water Gap and Beyond 199 

stopped at his home in the village to get his overcoat, 
and while he was gone I'd hug her and give her two or 
three blame nice kisses. 

"I remember one Sunday afternoon I went to the 
new teacher's boarding-place to see how she looked, and 
the people there had me stop and eat supper with 'em. 
Afterward the teacher said she was goin' to meetin,' 
and I says, 'Guess I might as well walk along, too.' 

"We hadn't gone far when I says: 'It's kind o' 
gloomy on the road. Take hold of my arm, and I'll 
assist you.' 

"Things was progressin' very nicely, and by and 
by I says: 'If you've no objection I'll walk home with 
you tonight. But no foolin'. I would n't go out before 
that crowd at the church and ask you and get a refusal 
for twenty dollars.' 

"She said she wouldn't disappoint me, and I left 
her at the church door and went in and sat in the choir. 
Oh, we had a good meetin', but I got away as soon as 
I could when it was over. The schoolma'am was out- 
side, and another feller was askin' if he might go home 
with her. 

" 'No I thank you,' she says, 'I've got company this 
evening.' I had a triumph that time. 

"I don't know just how much religion people got at 
those meetings. It was more excitement than anything 
else. One man who was always there was Jake Stickles. 
How he would pray! What he said was pretty sensible, 
but there was no end to it. Sometimes the dominie 



200 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

would have us sing to get Jake stopped, and very likely 
after we'd sung the whole piece he would n't have 
stopped yet. 

"People would get up and tell their experiences, and 
they'd urge the sinners to repent, and finally they got 
me on the anxious seat. I was taken in on probation, 
and the prospects were I'd be received into full church 
membership on the final night. Gee! what a crowd 
there'd be on that last Sunday night! But I did n't 
think I could keep store and join the church without 
bein' a hypocrite, and I did n't want people to say, 
'What a backslider he is!' So I made a date with a 
girl for that night and sat up with her till three o'clock 
in the morning. I wa'n't at the church at all and they 
gave me up as a bad case. 

"Naturally, after the Protracted Meetings, you could 
look for weddings. Those are very simple affairs here. 
You go to a justice of the peace and get hitched and 
return home. We don't indulge in wedding trips, but 
I know one feller with new-fangled notions who did, 
and he had n't been gone more'n a day or two before 
his wife got so homesick he had to bring her back. The 
cost of getting married is very moderate. A fee of a dol- 
lar or two satisfies the justice, of the peace, and Squire 
Styers used to do the job for a bobsled load of wood." 

Sunday passed and Monday came. The village 
work began at dawn, and by the time I was up the men 
were busy at their various outdoor tasks, and the 
women had started washing. Presently I betook my- 



The Water Gap and Beyond 201 

self to the highway and turned my footsteps toward 
the Water Gap. It was a beautiful day, warm and 
bright. I could see the glistening wings of many little 
flies and other insects playing in the sunshine, and the 
fields were alive with grasshoppers and crickets fiddling 
merrily and wholly unaware that the frosts would soon 
put an end to them. Sometimes I heard the clear, 
vigorous call of a white-throated sparrow migrating 
southward, or I heard the rhythmic "hammering" of 
a partridge in the woodland, and once I scared up as 
many as twenty quail from a roadside tangle and saw 
them whir away in wild fright. 

Men were ploughing on the hillsides, sowing grain, 
and husking corn. The generous heaps of yellow ears 
and the scattered pumpkins among the stacks were 
grateful to the eye, and cheered one with the sugges- 
tion of winter comfort. Around the houses too were 
many evidences of the harvest — strings of seed corn, 
ripening tomatoes brought in from the garden, heaps 
of melons and squashes, apples and nuts. 

So I went on, sometimes picking up an apple to eat 
under a roadside tree, or perhaps pausing to gather a 
few frost grapes; and though I doubt not that the 
valley here has charm at any season, it seemed to me 
that it must be at its best as I saw it in those mellow 
days of autumn. 

Notes. — The gorge where the Delaware flows through the 
Kittantinny Mountains is supposed to be the result of a large lake 
breaking its bounds. This theory is borne out by the Indian name 



202 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

Minisink which applied to the country above, and which means 
"the water is gone." Only by taking a trip through the gap in one 
of the rowboats or power boats that are for hire can you get an ade- 
quate impression of its two-mile length and of the height of its 
rocky walls rising 1,500 feet almost from the water's edge. There 
are in the vicinity numerous vernal roadways, sylvan paths, water- 
falls, and outlooks from cliff and hill and mountain-top that entice 
one to a prolonged stay. 

The automobile route from here to New York by way of Morris- 
town, 79 miles, is mostly good macadam. A more interesting route 
is that along the river south to Philadelphia, 118 miles, mostly good 
roads. Trenton, 73 miles, is the capitol of the state. It is at the 
head of navigation of the Delaware. Great quantities of peaches 
and cranberries are raised in the tributary region. General Mc- 
Clellan is buried in Riverview Cemetery here. Washington crossed 
the Delaware, 8 miles to the north on Christmas night, 1776, in a 
storm of sleet and snow, to attack 1,000 Hessians quartered in the 
city. He captured them all, evaded Cornwallis, defeated the British 
at Princeton and retired northward to Morristown. Cornwallis, 
who had sent his trunks on board ship, intending to return to Eng- 
land, with the idea that the war was over, changed his mind. 

At Bordentown, 7 miles below Trenton, Joseph Bonaparte, elder 
brother of Napoleon, and at one time King of Naples and King of 
Spain, bought an estate of 1,400 acres after Waterloo. Here he 
lived from 18 1 5 to 1832 entertaining many illustrious Frenchmen. 
The estate is now public property and known as Bonaparte Park. 

At Burlington, 13 miles farther on, is the house in which J. 
Fennimore Cooper was born, and the birthplace of Captain James 
Lawrence of "Don't give up the ship" fame. General Grant had 
his home here during the Civil War. Giant sycamores to which the 
early settlers tied their boats, still enhance the beauty of drives 
along the riverbank. 

At Camden, just across the river from Philadelphia, can be seen 
the house of Walt. Whitman, the "Good Gray Poet." 




A back porch 



IX 



ALONG SHORE IN JERSEY 



I WOULD have been glad to spend my time in some 
rustic fishing village or old-fashioned farming com- 
munity, but the entire Jersey shore seems to have 
become a suburb of New York and Philadelphia. It 
has not, at best, much scenic attraction, for the coast 
is uniformly low, and for variety it is mostly dependent 
on the numerous, wide marshes, and a network of salt- 
water inlets along the ocean borders. So far as hu- 
manity is concerned the region presents just two 
dominant features: First, the many palatial residences 
set in smooth, luxuriant grounds, where Nature is com- 
pelled to behave herself and to present at all times a 
tidy, dressed-up appearance, with none of the wildness 
and gypsy abandon which she prefers; second, a 
succession of summer resort towns. 

I stopped at one of these resorts by advice of a florid, 
talkative man I met on the train. He had been taking 
some sort of liquid refreshment that made him effusive, 
and he described the place as a sort of heaven on earth. 
It was there he had lived at a former period in his career 
when he had been worth half a million dollars. He 
even told me what hotel I ought to go to — one kept by 
a certain John A. Casey. "It's near the station and 



204 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

near the shore," he said, "and you'll get solid, old- 
time comfort there. John A. will make you feel at 
home. The food is set right on the table, and he carves 
himself. If you want more of any particular thing 
you don't have to ask a waiter for it, because it's right 
there before you. Yes, you go and put up with John A., 
and the food and the pure air and the sound of the 
waves will give you a splendid rest tonight, unless 
you've committed murder." 

But I did not find the town what I expected from the 
description of this enthusiast. Moreover, it was the 
month of May, and the hotels were not yet open for 
the season. I lodged at a boarding-house where the 
landlady only allowed me to stop after looking at me 
critically and asking various questions to determine 
whether I was trustworthy. Later she told me why 
she needed to be so cautious. She had been swindled 
more than once, and as recently as last summer a 
sporty gang of young men she had harbored sneaked 
off with their luggage without paying their bill. But 
she was glad they went as soon as they did, pay or no 
pay, for they had attempted to flirt with her daughter, 
and were a bad lot anyway. 

"Do you see that little house across the street?" 
she continued. "It was built to rent by a neighbor of 
ours who's a baker. When it was ready a family hired 
it for the season and paid the first month's rent in ad- 
vance, as is the custom. They had their servants and 
appeared to be rich and aristocratic, and the baker 



Along Shore in Jersey 205 

congratulated himself on getting tenants of such 
quality. They patronized the bakery freely and had 
what they bought charged. In fact, they ran accounts 
wherever they traded. Why! even the man who peddles 
fowls — Chicken Harris, we call him — had to wait for 
his pay. He's waiting yet, and so are all the others. 
One autumn day the family packed up their belongings 
and went away. The baker dunned them as they were 
leaving, but they put him off with promises. Their 
city address that they gave him was false. So what 
could he do? Appeal to the law? That would have 
been too expensive and troublesome. He could n't 
do a thing." 

The place was like many other of the shore resorts — 
a monotonous village of wooden houses that had 
among them an occasional big, ungainly hotel. The 
land was naturally a sandy barren that did not en- 
courage grass or other greenery, and trees were a 
rarity. Few of the homes or hotels were occupied 
except in the burning days of summer, and the town 
was "dead" the rest of the year. Where land and sea 
met were ragged, yellow streaks of dunes, their bases 
assailed by the waves, and their upper portions worried 
by the winds. 

Of all the places I saw along the coast, the one that 
I enjoyed most was Toms River. It was well back 
inland at the head of a bay, and had thus escaped the 
city invaders, and was tranquilly old, rather than 
glaringly new. The town consisted of a little nucleus 



206 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

of stores, hotels, churches, and other public buildings, 
including a solemn, high-pillared courthouse, and be- 
hind these were shady residence streets. 

On my first morning there the weather was gloomily 
doubtful. Now and then the sun gleamed forth faintly, 
but for the most part I could only see low, foggy 
clouds scurrying along overhead. An old man, who 
had come up from the lower bay with a motor boatload 
of clams, remarked that he "would n't wonder if the 
wind got around to the west and blew like a streak o' 
gimblets point foremost." But toward noon the mists 
suddenly melted away, and the sun shone forth with 
fervent heat. 

The motor boat was tied just below a bridge, close 
to the town center, and the wharf there was a common 
resort for loiterers. Often a lounger or a customer 
would get into the boat, pry open a few clams, and eat 
the dripping bivalves right from the shell. 

Near at hand, on the street, was a rude fishcart from 
which the horse had been detached; and its patrons and 
open air traffic seemed to furnish an attractive spectacle 
to the loafers and decrepit of the town. They sat or stood 
on the adjacent sidewalk and from time to time peered 
in at the back of the cart to watch the process of be- 
heading and making the fish ready for customers. 

"There used to be a covered wooden bridge where 
this iron bridge is now," one of the men said to me, 
"and on the outside was a footway. One day a Sunday- 
school picnic come here on the train from another town. 



Along Shore in Jersey 207 

Let me see — mought 'a' been forty years ago. The 
whole crowd of 'em got onto the footway, and it broke 
in the middle, and down they slid from both directions, 
like they was on a chute, into twenty-five feet of water. 
They were as thick as eels in there. It seemed as if a 
dozen boats were on the spot right off pulling the folks 
oat of the water, but they could n't get 'em all. Five 
or six drownded, and it's a wonder that no more were 
lost." 

One of my walks took me along the northern bay- 
side where the land sloped up into mild hills that 
afforded a pleasant outlook over the broad bay with 
its various islands, including among the rest Money 
Island, so named because long ago the half mythical 
Captain Kidd hid some of his wholly mythical treasure 
there. After a while I stopped to drink at a wayside 
well. It was an open well that had a wooden curb 
about it, and the water was obtained by lowering a 
pail hung on a crotch at the butt end of the pole. While 
I was drinking, a gray, stocky man accosted me from 
a neighboring dooryard. He evidently had the leisure 
and the inclination to talk, and I sought the shade of a 
convenient tree and we visited. 

At the backdoor of the next house a woman with a 
black muffler about her head was chopping some rub- 
bishy sticks into firewood. Near her a lank elderly 
man with streaks of tobacco juice down his chin was 
harnessing a horse that distinctly exhibited all its 
bony anatomy. "They're the owners of that well," 



208 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

my companion said. "That's a pretty shabby lookin' 
place of theirs ain't it? But they've got plenty of land 
they could sell at a high price, only they're so old- 
fashioned they won't part with it. If they raise enough 
stuff to keep 'em through the winter that's all they care 
about. They never have a cent of money. The fact is, 
any one who's lookin' around for a job that pays big 
without workin' don't want to attempt farmin' here. 

"I've spent most of my life in New York, but I got 
tired of the city. It's hubbub and everything there — 
up in a minute and down in a minute; and one day I 
said to myself: 'Good Lord! what's the use? I've only 
got one life to live;' and I quit at once. 

"You may wonder why I came here. The truth of 
the matter is there was a woman in it. My wife had 
lived down in this region and this was where she wanted 
to have a home. The first thing I did was to buy a 
farm. I don't know why. I ain't fit to work on a farm 
and never had had any experience on one; but I had 
the luck to sell out soon at an advance, and then I got 
this little place. I have an automobile, and when I'm 
tired of that I get into my motor boat and go fishing or 
down to the lighthouse clamming. That boat carries 
me around the bay like clockwork. 

"I've never had the least inclination to go back to 
the city, but I must say I did n't appreciate it here last 
winter. The bay froze over solid, and all these fellers 
that get a livin' by fishin' came near starvin' to death. 
I said to my wife, 'If a man happens along and 



Along Shore in Jersey 209 

wants to buy this place, we'll sell it and go to Florida 
to live.' 

"But my wife said, 'Well, Pa, don't get discouraged. 
Most likely we won't have such a winter again.' ' 

After parting with this contented individual I con- 
tinued my ramble, but it presently took me into one of 
the summer resort villages, and then I went back to 
Toms River. 

On another day I followed the road in the opposite 
direction. Here were little farms, and I could see peas 
in blossom in the gardens, and ripe strawberries. The 
sweet potatoes in the hotbeds were ready to transplant, 
and the "white" or "round" potatoes, as they called 
the Irish variety, were six inches high. The corn was 
up, and belligerent scarecrows stood on guard among 
the green sprouts. I was particularly impressed by one 
of these fake sentinels — a trowsered creature adorned 
with a woman's hat. What could be better calculated 
to carry dismay to every crow beholder than this 
militant suffragette? 

By and by the road entered a ragged tract of forest, 
and the woodland was so forlorn and apparently un- 
ending that I at length turned back. When I was again 
among the farms I observed two women visiting on a 
home piazza. I stopped for a drink of water and 
lingered to chat with them. They addressed each other 
as Emma and Harriet. The latter was making a neigh- 
borly call. The house was a bare, rusty-looking struc- 
ture, and there was brushland across the road and close 



210 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

behind the dwelling. Yet the women seemed to admire 
the environment and called my attention to the beauty 
of the brushy ridge beyond the highway. 

"That was burnt over a few years ago," Emma said. 
"Oh my! it was a bad fire. You see that there oak tree 
in the corner of the yard. The fire killed the half toward 
the road, and we did n't dare stay here. From the next 
house we could n't see this one through the smoke. 
When the fire got to the swamp — wo-o-o-o! it made a 
great racket. 

"In one way the forest fires are a great help. The 
year after a tract is burned over you find the black- 
berries and huckleberries growing there to beat the 
band. The children all go out in the woods to pick 'em. 
That's a way they have of earnin' pin money. 

"Cranberries are quite a crop here. The Eyetalians 
pick most of them. When they get good pickin' they 
sing all day long. But if the pickin' is poor they do 
more talkin' and less singin'. They're the happiest 
people on earth." 

"One of 'em had an adventure with a snapping 
turtle last fall," Harriet remarked. "He was tellin' 
me about it just after it happened, but he could n't 
speak English very well and did n't know the name for 
turtle. So he imitated its motions to show what animal 
he meant and called it a son of a gun. He said: 'That 
son of a gun, he got hold of my pants right here above 
my shoe, and I try to pull him off, and the more I pull 
the more that son of a gun won't let go. I pulled till 




Reflections 



Along Shore in Jersey 211 

I tore my pants, and that son of a gun, he got a piece 
of my pants now.' His way of tellin' it was so funny 
that I laughed till I thought I'd bust." 

"I don't know anything about snappers from my 
own experience and don't want to," Emma commented, 
"but if one once gets hold he never lets go, they tell 
me. You can't even pry his jaws apart, and if you kill 
him he'll live two or three hours afterward. They're 
very good to eat. Snapper soup is considered the 
thing, you know, among the high-toned city people." 

"Shoo! shoo!" 

This exclamation came simultaneously from both 
the women. A crow flying past had made a downward 
dip toward the chickens in the back yard. "The 
hawks and crows have lifted quite a number of my 
chickens this spring," said Emma. 

"My place is in the woods," Harriet observed, "and 
I'm more troubled by the tramp dogs. They're dogs 
that don't belong to nobody, and they go in the swamps 
and run the rabbits. You can hear 'em yelpin' all night 
long. But no matter how much chasin' they do, nothin' 
is said; and yet if one of your own dogs was to get 
after the rabbits the game warden would arrest you, 
and you'd be fined twenty dollars. There's seven of 
them tramp dogs. I know because I've counted 'em 
till I've got sick of lookin' at 'em. They took twenty- 
two of my chickens one night, and they took my full- 
blooded cochin rooster. All I could find of him was a 
few of his tail feathers. Last night I lost six eggs right 



212 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

out from under a settin' hen. Probably rats took 'em. 
Yes, chickens are quite a care, but when you look to it 
the exercise you get makes it worth while. Keeping 
the big ones from fighting the little ones, scaring off 
the hawks and other enemies brings more stiffness out 
of your joints than anything else. 

"We all raise chickens. When they get growed, if 
prices are high, we sell 'em, and if prices are low we 
put 'em in the pot for our own eatin'. Same way with 
eggs. We eat 'em when the price is down, and stop 
eatin' 'em when the price is up. At present feed for 
the chickens costs enough to drive you to the poor- 
house. But no matter how poor we are we all manage 
to have washing machines and a good share of the other 
latest conveniences. You may not find us a beautiful 
people here in Jersey, but we're substantial." 

"I've only heard the Bob White four times this 
spring," Emma said. "Looks as if there would n't 
be many for the hunters in the fall." 

"Well," Harriet said, "just the same, every man 
who's got a dog and can handle a gun will be out the 
first day of the gunnin' season to see what he can get. 
Rabbits are plenty. There's no end to 'em. They eat 
off the bark from the young trees and ruin 'em, and if 
you have sweet potatoes or peas near the woods they'll 
clean 'em right off. Out there in my walk I see 'em 
early every mornin' and after four o'clock in the 
evenin' playing tag." 

"Tonight there'll be lots of mosquitoes," Emma 



Along Shore in Jersey 213 

remarked. "The wind is in the south, and they'll 
blow up from the salt marshes where they breed. 
They're hateful things, but people who live here get 
used to 'em and ain't affected by the poison so as to 
get all blotched up as strangers do." 

"The first crop of mosquitoes are big ones this year," 
Harriet observed," and their instruments are long and 
sharp. Emma, ain't you goin' to have this porch closed 
in with mosquito netting? Most every one is doing it 
now." 

"What troubles me most is the pine flies," Emma 
said. "They're no larger than a house fly, but when 
they get onto you they're enough to make you say your 
prayers the other way; and they're awfully tormentin' 
to the animals. Another pest is what we call the green- 
head fly. It's much larger than the pine fly, and its 
bite is like the cut of a knife. They don't bother much 
on cloudy days." 

"There's lots of treetoads around my house," Harriet 
said, "and they sing lovely when it's goin' to rain. 
Some claim they're as poison as a rattlesnake if they 
bite you." 

"I wish our place was within sight of the ocean," 
Emma remarked. "The hill back of us hides it, but 
we can hear the roar of the waves when there's a north- 
east storm. In some respects, though, we've got ad- 
vantages that can't be beat. We're so placed that we 
get three different kinds of air— 7 sea air, inland air, and 
air from the pines. It's a good region for invalids. 



214 Highways and Byways— St. Lawrence to Virginia 

Those who're afflicted and ain't benefited in one spot 
can move a little way and get another sort of air that'll 
help them. The balsam from the pines is just what 
some of 'em need, and often a person who can't sleep 
has a pillow made of pine needles to put under his head. 
Our climate is goin' to build up this section wonderful 
in the next few years. There's that big brushy tract 
across the road — it was all sold off for building lots 
once. The promoters drew a map, like they all do 
when they're boomin' such property, and they put 
avenues on it, and had pictures of a hotel on the land 
with trolleys runnin' in front, and their advertising 
told what splendid railroad felicities we have here. The 
people up in New York bought the lots like hotcakes, 
but they lost all they invested, for the fellows who did 
the selling did n't own the property; and the chief man 
in this hoax business was sent to jail." 

While we were talking a young man who was board- 
ing at the house joined us. He was introduced to me as 
a person who was staying there a spell to recover from 
an attack of malaria. " But he ain't got it the way they 
used to have it," Emma affirmed. "They had it so 
they'd shake when I was a girl." 

"I been consultin' a doctor," the boarder said, "but 
he's like all the rest of 'em now — prescribes the fresh 
air cure for everything. There's nothin' worse in the 
world, I believe. It stands to reason that when you're 
sick you ought to keep out of a draught, not get into 
one." 



Along Shore in Jersey 215 

"Old-fashioned people used to doctor themselves a 
good deal," Emma observed. "To break up a cold 
they'd get you into a perspiration with hot poultices. 
But of course you ought to take doctor's medicine, too, 
even if it don't seem to make a great sight of difference." 

"I'm a draughtsman for a real estate concern," the 
boarder said, "and I was interested in hearin' what 
you said about the sellin' of this property across the 
road. You was talkin' about it when I come out of the 
house. The head of my firm is one of the pillars of the 
church he attends, and he claims a man can be a good 
church member and sell real estate, but I don't believe 
it. I've seen too much of their doin's, and the fancy 
literature they send out. Even the best of 'em do some 
things that are a little off color. My firm has photo- 
graphs made of their properties and then tell the 
photographer what trees, pavements, and other im- 
provements they want put in before the final prints 
are made to sell from. 

"At one time the firm advertised a property near 
Elizabeth in this state, and said it was within sight of 
New York. Well, it was, if you went high enough in 
the air. They sold to customers in Canada and all 
around. The lots looked like good investments if you 
believed the promoters' statements. Some of the lots 
were right in the middle of a swamp where the water 
stood a foot deep after a rain." 

"I read in the paper," Harriet said, "that a rich 
philanthropist had bought thousands and thousands 



216 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

of acres in Davenport just east of here and proposes 
to start a prosperous farm settlement there of poor 
people from the cities. It tells how attractive the region 
is, and says the land is first-class. That's a big lie. 
It's the most deserted, God-forsaken sand-place you 
ever saw." 

"If they want to get crops," Emma said, "they'll 
need to put other soil over that there land. It won't 
hardly grow sandburs, and they say that even the 
mosquitoes starve to death there." 

When I rose to go Harriet asked me to notice a large, 
old-fashioned house I would pass on my way to town. 
"It ain't built straight with the road," she said, "but 
is placed so the sun at noontime shines straight in the 
front door. There's lots of houses through the woods 
here that have real Dutch doors in 'em — doors that are 
divided across the middle, and you can open the upper 
half and look out." 

By the time I was back in the town it was dusky 
evening. A full moon in the east was gradually grow- 
ing golden as the twilight deepened. Swallows were 
twittering and darting above the village roofs and trees. 
Here and there were people strolling on the walks or 
loitering in front of the stores. On the piazza of my 
hotel the landlord and some friends were talking 
politics. The landlord's manner was impressively 
assured, and he offered to bet on the rightness of his 
opinions a generous portion of a roll of bills he had 
taken from his pocket and was waving about. 



Along Shore in Jersey 217 

A little later I called on a retired sea captain of whom 
I had heard. I found him in his parlor — a man of more 
than fourscore years, but erect and vigorous — playing 
cards with his wife in the waning light. It was a pleas- 
ing sight to see their companionableness as they sat 
there by the window in the serene twilight of the day, 
and the no less serene twilight of their lives. 

In response to my questions he recalled conditions 
in the vicinity as they used to be in his youth. "This 
is naturally a wooded country," he said, "and used to 
be covered with heavy pine timber, as pretty as ever 
was seen. The tree-trunks were as big as beer kegs; 
and there was fine cedar in the swamps. Some good 
cedar is still left over near Double Trouble. That's a 
name was given to the place because the dam they first 
put in there went out right after it was finished and 
they had to rebuild. 

"Perhaps you wonder about the name of this place. 
Some say it comes from an Indian named Tom who 
lived here, but that's not certain. This used to be a 
great resort of the Indians. They came long distances 
to get fish and oysters. I've ploughed up a many of 
their spear heads and pieces of pottery, and dug up 
skulls. Now and then I'd find axe-heads, but I did n't 
think anything at all of 'em then and would throw 
'em up side of the fence. They'd be quite a curiosity 
now. 

"Before coal became the common fuel they loaded 
vessels with cordwood at our wharves to go to New York. 



218 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

I was a good-sized boy before I ever saw coal. We 
shipped away timber and cordwood, and we made 
charcoal, and the fires run over the old forest lands and 
left nothing but desert. The topsoil has been burned 
off so that such timber as grew here in the past won't 
be possible again under the most favorable conditions 
for hundreds of years. 

"My father had about fifteen cows. In the early 
morning they fed on the salt meadows; but by ten 
o'clock the mosquitoes was usually bad and the cows 
went to the swamps. Animals get fat on that salt 
grass. It's clean, with no garlic into it, and makes the 
nicest kind of butter. Plenty of cattle have never e't 
any hay but that from the salt meadows. People mow 
what they don't pasture, but it takes three acres to 
produce now what one formerly did. They cut it too 
late. They'll go right onto the meadows with their 
mowing-machines in October, and that leaves the 
ground bare to freeze in winter. 

"Our cows were always milked by she-males. The 
generality of men did n't milk then, but they have to 
now. A girl would feel insulted if she was asked to 
milk a cow in these days. That's what she would, and 
I don't believe a cow would let a girl come near her. 

"All the women and girls were workers when I was 
young, and in planting time and haying and harvest 
they'd turn right in and help a few days outdoors. A 
girl of twelve could drop corn as well as a man fifty 
years old. The housekeeping was simpler then than 




The Scarecrozi 



Along Shore in Jersey 219 

at present, or the women could n't have managed it. 
Houses averaged smaller, and contained less furniture, 
and there was n't so much ceremony about serving 
the food. Anyone coming to the table after others had 
got through would eat off the first one's plates. That 
would n't do now, but if in some way we could make 
our modern homes less of a care I don't doubt that the 
women's health would be better. They'd feel more 
comfortable in mind and body, too, if they could work 
a part of the time in the open air. But the human 
animal is naturally lazy, and as a rule we all avoid 
tasks that we're not forced to do by necessity or 
fashion. 

"When I began voyaging, about 1850, the New 
Yorkers who wanted to come to the shore in this direc- 
tion would rarely go farther than Long Branch, and 
none of the other resorts were much developed. I'll 
be darned if there was a single hotel at Atlantic City, 
and it was a lonely coast all along. Men who came 
gunning got any quantity of game — snipe and ducks 
and geese. I've seen the ducks fly up so thick they 
almost hid the sun. That would n't be just one time, 
but day after day for three or four months. Now you 
would n't see more than one or two game waterfowl in 
a week. The trouble is they get no chance to breed in 
a region so thickly populated. There's seldom a mile 
of coast without its residence, and if you sail along of 
an evening you find it lighted the entire distance from 
Cape May to New York." 



220 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

Notes. — The most conspicuous feature of the northern Jersey 
coast is Sandy Hook, which forms one of the portals of New York 
Bay. It is occupied by an old stone fort, 3 lighthouses, and a United 
States Army Ordnance Station where guns are tested. 

An automobile route from New York follows the coast, as closely 
as the inlets and marshes will permit, even to Cape May. The roads 
are generally excellent. Near Highlands, at the southernmost 
nook of New York Harbor, is Water Witch Park, which takes its 
name from Cooper's "Water Witch," a novel that has its scene laid 
in the vicinity. 

A seaside resort with an individuality of its own is Ocean Grove. 
It was established in 1870 by a Methodist association, and is now 
frequented yearly by over 20,000 people, both young and old, who 
elect to spend their summer vacations under a religious autocracy. 
The grounds have the sea on the east, lakes north and south, and a 
high fence on the west. At 10 in the evening, daily, the gates are 
closed, and they are not opened at all on Sunday. No Sabbath 
bathing, riding, or driving is permitted, and no theatrical perform- 
ances are allowed at any time. Drinking of alchoholic beverages 
and the sale of tobacco are strictly prohibited. Innumerable re- 
ligious meetings are held daily. The chief place of assemblage is a 
huge auditorium that can accommodate 10,000 people. The annual 
camp meeting is the great event of the season. 

Those who prefer a more free and easy enjoyment of their vaca- 
tions can find plenty of opportunity at the other coast resorts. 
There is Long Branch, for instance, with a permanent population 
of 12,000, and a summer population of 5 times that number. It 
occupies a seaward facing bluff which rises to a height of about 30 
feet above the beautiful sandy beach. At Elberon, the fashionable 
cottage part of the resort, can be seen the dwelling in which Presi- 
dent Garfield died. 

Atlantic City, the most frequented of all American seaside re- 
sorts, is on a sandstrip separated from the coast by 5 miles of sea 
and salt meadows. In August the visitors who flock there from all 



Along Shore in Jersey 221 

over the country swell the number of inhabitants to about 200,000, 
and more than 50,000 have bathed in the sea there in a single day. 
It attracts visitors through the entire year, for the climate is com- 
paratively mild and sunny even in winter, and the air is exceedingly 
tonic. The beach is surpassingly fine, and is bordered by the 
famous "Board Walk." This walk is 40 feet wide and over 5 miles 
long, and is flanked on the landward side by hotels, shops, and 
places of amusement. 

Cape May is a rival of Atlantic City in its natural attractions, 
but is not quite as easily reached. 

A favorite inland resort is Lakewood, 63 miles south of New 
York. It is in the heart of the pine woods, and on account of its 
sheltered situation and mild climate it is much frequented in winter. 



X 



A GLIMPSE OF DELAWARE 



THE landscape had been freshened by showers 
the previous day and now was smiling in the 
caresses of the bright sunshine. A brisk breeze 
wafted the grain in the big wheatfields into long green 
waves, and brought in at the open car windows the 
odor of strawberries and clover blossoms. The level 
farmlands looked fertile and well-tilled, and the farm 
homes had a pleasing aspect of prosperity and com- 
fort. 

"Delaware farmers are more industrious than when 
I was a boy," a train acquaintance remarked. "These 
are nice places we're seein', and kep' up in good style. 
Corn and wheat used to be about all the farmer raised, 
but now they put their dependence more on berries 
and early produce. It's a good place for a poor man to 
raise everything he wants to eat with very little exer- 
tion and have some to spare. 

"See those pine logs lyin' there by that freight sta- 
tion. We would n't use to ship such like stuff — we 
would n't touch it. It's bull pine, and that's nothin' 
more than a tree weed, and is tough and warps around 
so you can't hardly manage it. But if you want to 
put up a barn or a shed it does for a makeshift. 



A Glimpse of Delaware 223 

"They're gettin' to have very good roads. I can 
remember when travellin' on 'em was a hardship. 
They were all standin' water in the winter time. Farm 
work used to be done by cattle power, and if a man 
wanted to go to a place that was farther away than he 
could walk he stayed at home. Many a man had no 
horse at all and lived and died without ever owning 
one. Log houses were common till after the war, and 
the people were land poor. The principal part of the 
young men went to sea, but by and by they came home 
tired of that and bought land. That air cut the farms 
up, and they've learned to make the land profitable 
so that I bet you now two-thirds of the farmers have 
bank accounts. You ask 'em how they're gettin' on 
and they'll say, 'Oh, we're a-livin', but we ain't a 
makin' much.' 

"Then you ask if they've got a bank account, and 
they'll acknowledge they have. All the towns have 
banks these days, and they take in money hand over 
fist. New York and Philadelphia always used to be 
afraid to trust any man livin' in the state of Delaware 
for a five cent piece, but I guess they're changin' their 
minds now. It looks that way to me." 

I went as far as Lewes at the mouth of Delaware 
Bay. It was here that the first settlers of the state 
from across the Atlantic established themselves. The 
place has never grown rapidly and is still half rustic, 
and abounds in delightful old mansions that are hu- 
manized by their association with past generations, 



224 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

and that nestle amid a charming luxuriance of greenery 
and blossoms. 

The dwellings on the seaward borders of the town 
stand on ground that drops abruptly away to a wide 
level of salt marshes, and the homes on "the bank" 
are commonly spoken of collectively as "Pilot-town," 
because so many pilots live there. The situation is 
peculiarly satisfactory to them, for they like to live 
where they can "spy out on the water." At the far 
edge of the marshes are sand dunes, one of which rises in 
a vast yellow ridge that is slowly enveloping a pine wood. 

"Sand is always in motion," a local man observed 
to me. "It's as unstable as water. You sit down to 
eat a lunch off there on the shore, and you may think 
there's not any wind at all, but you'll find that sand 
gets into your bread and butter just the same. I've 
known of a long row of bath-houses that in a single 
winter were nearly all buried out of sight by the drift- 
ing sand." 

One day I followed a roadway across the marshes 
to the shore of the bay. Vessels were coming and going 
on the misty gray waters and, northward, twelve miles 
away, was Cape May, a low blue streak in the dim 
distance. I went along the beach toward the ocean. 
At one spot were a few fishermen's shacks on the dunes, 
and farther on was a factory that made a business of 
extracting fish oil from "porgies." During the season 
a fleet is kept on the sea catching the fish, and thou- 
sands of barrels are filled with oil each week. I thought 



A Glimpse of Delaware 225 

the vicinity was odorous to the limit of endurance, 
though it was affirmed that the season's work had not 
yet begun, and that I only smelled the ghosts of last 
year's oil-extracting. "Besides," this informant said, 
"they say the smell is healthy, and you get used to it 
and don't notice it after a while. But it went pretty 
hard with the town folks when the factory was first 
built. The smell blows right over there when the wind 
is to the east'ard. One lady said she had to get up in 
the night to perfume herself." 

At length I crossed a sandy point where the bones of 
many a staunch ship lay imbedded, and had before 
me the restless billows of the open ocean, and could 
hear a bell buoy tolling its somber, warning notes. 
Where sand and water met was a recent wreck with 
most of its masts still standing. But the hull was 
badly broken, and the waves were roaring and dashing 
about it like ravenous beasts. For a considerable dis- 
tance I continued to stroll along the shore, just out 
of reach of the slither of foam that each breaking wave 
sent far up the incline of the beach. When I presently 
turned my footsteps toward the town I decided to 
make a short cut across the marshes. But as soon as 
I left the dunes and was down on the low ground I 
stirred up a horde of mosquitoes in the coarse, thin 
grass. They settled on my clothing and clung there, 
and made such savage assaults on my face and hands 
with their poisoned lances that I shifted my course to 
the sandhills where these pests were comparatively few. 



226 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

It was supper-time when I reached my hotel, and 
most of the guests, and the proprietor and his family, 
had sat down to eat. As I took my place the landlord 
remarked to a lady at a table adjacent to his, "It's 
blustering this evening." 

"Oh, yes," she responded, "the wind comes up every 
evening and blows like the dickens. You know that, 
don't you?" 

"Well," he said, "I don't know much of anything, 
and half I do know ain't so." 

"Did you go to that dance last night?" she asked. 

"Yes," he replied, "and my girl was the best lookin' 
girl there. The only fault I had to find was that she 
would n't stand straight. We all have our troubles. 
I hearn one feller complain that his girl could n't dance 
without steppin' on his feet. Then there was a girl 
from Wilmington that I tried to be pleasant to; but 
she was mad because she'd sat on a strawberry and 
spotted her dress. So she would n't talk." 

In the lingering twilight that evening I visited a 
negro cemetery. The graves clustered about a plain 
little church. A few of them had headstones or 
wooden markers, but evidently there was nothing to 
show the location of most of them when the mounds 
disappeared. The two most conspicuous headstones 
were flat slabs of cement, each with a heart incised 
near the top. The lettering had been roughly cut into 
the cement before it hardened. Here are the inscrip- 
tions: 








The wreck 



A Glimpse of Delaware 227 

Elizabath Cele Burton 

W. Maull Bornd in 1 891 

died in Aug. 8 Died 1903 

1896 Dec. May 19 

9 Age 44 Soon too My 

Safte in Slumbering 

the Dust Shall Hear 

Arms of the Trumphets 

Jesus Iuecking Sound 

That peculiar word in the final line of the Burton 
stone is probably meant for "quickening." 

While I was looking at these cement works of art a 
negro laborer on his way home from the fields came 
through the cemetery, stopped, and said: "A colored 
boy described those out and made them himself. He 
was only about fifteen, but he did a right good job." 

Along the path that led from the street to the church 
were many seemingly new-made graves. I fancied an 
epidemic had been sweeping off the negro dwellers of 
the town, but the colored worker said: "Oh, no, sir, 
the graves have been renewed and freshened up for 
Decoration Day. They look neater to keep the grass 
off, but we only trouble to do these along the walk. 
That's the oldest part of the cemetery over there next 
to the dividation line. Often when we are digging a 
grave there we find skull bones and leg bones and arm 



228 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

bones. Of co'se we naturally did n't know any one 
was buried at the spot we'd picked out. Ginerally we 
put the bones back right where they were and dig in 
another place. 

"A good many have died this past year. For one 
thing we've had a fearful winter — the worst in thirty- 
five years. It's the coldest we ever experienced — I 
don't except none. You just bet you had to keep as 
near the stove as you could without gettin' burnt. I 
hearn sev'ral talkin' of a man who suffered with cold 
feet. It seemed he could n't get 'em warm nohow, 
and finally he pulled off his shoes and slapped his feet 
up on the stove. That way he got 'em a little warmer 
than he wanted to, and they held so much heat that 
afterward he could n't get 'em cool. 

"You mought think that lots o' the houses you see 
was so poorly built or in such bad repair they would n't 
be much protection, but it's my idea that most houses 
are too tight to be healthy. I know a white gen'leman 
who lives in an old house that's never been fixed up in 
years. If he goes to bed at night and there comes a 
snow, he feels the flakes droppin' down on his face from 
the leaky roof; and in the mornin' he jumps right out 
of bed into a snowbank. He has six or eight children, 
and he says to me, 'They never have had a day's sick- 
ness. But I confess,' says he, 'that many a time I 
would n't have cared if the house had been a little 
tighter.' 

"The crops are lookin' very prosperous this season, 



A Glimpse of Delaware 229 

ain't they? Last year we had n't broke up any ground 
at this time it was so dry. You could n't get a plough 
point into the clay land. But at last, some way or 
'nother, most men managed to get a little seed planted. 
The wheat was n't putt in early enough though for it 
to git a holt, and the dry weather just killed it dead. 
Our corn was so parched up we did n't have none 
noway, and the strawberries dried and cooked right 
on the vines, and wa'n't anything. We did n't have 
no luck with our potatoes either. Gosh! the for'ard 
potatoes was nothin', and the late crop was a failery, 
too. We was cut short on everything. Oh, the farmers 
was torn all to pieces last year." 

Another negro who furnished me enlightenment of a 
picturesque sort was a gray, elderly man whom I 
accosted the next day as he was hoeing a little patch 
of potatoes beside his house. 

"Potatoes are not up where I live," I said. 

"Where do you come from? he inquired. 

"From Massachusetts," I replied. 

"Good land!" he exclaimed, "you're a long way 
from home, I reckon. Is Massachusetts in the north 
part of the climate or the south part?" 

"The north," I said. 

"How long does it take to come from there to here?" 
was his next question. 

When I had satisfied him on- that point he remarked 
that he did not usually hoe his garden except in the 
evening. "I'm hired out to work durin' the day," he 



230 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

said, "but this mornin' I been helpin' my wife to wash 
some. She's kind o' been paralyzed. 

"See, there's some potato-bug eggs on that leaf. 
About a thousand bugs would hatch out of them eggs, 
so I'll just pinch 'em with my fingers. Along about 
the last o' March the bugs are flyin' all over this 
country. If there's easterly weather at that time 
vessels meet great rafts of 'em on the water, and you 
find 'em heaped up on the beach. That shows they 
come from some foreign place where it don't freeze. 
But a good many of 'em stay in the ground here all 
winter. I've dug 'em out in February, and they were 
as much alive as ever they are. You plant your pota- 
toes, and the bugs come right up with 'em ready to 
begin eatin'. Most people fight 'em with poison, but 
I don't keer to do that. I think some of the poison 
might get in the potatoes. So I go to work and ketch 
the bugs and pull their heads off. Then I know they're 
done. If I pick 'em in a bucket and undertake to 
mash 'em with my foot I'm satisfied that some of 'em 
live. They're pretty tough. I wonder that they don't 
try to get away by flyin'. They've got wings. But 
they act like a possum — soon as you touch 'em they 
drop and act as if they was dead — ha-ha-ha-ha! They're 
jus' tryin' to fool you. Everything has to have its 
little smart ways. I keep pickin' 'em off, and 'bout the 
time I think I'm cle'r of 'em the eggs are comin' on to 
hatch. I don't know what them bugs ever originated 
from, but I've always kind o' thought in my own mind 




Setting the net 



A Glimpse of Delaware 231 

it was from guano. We never had no such thing be- 
fore the guano and stuff began to be brought across the 
ocean here. 

"There was a different kind o' bugs on the potatoes 
when I was a boy a-comin' up, and I'm somewhere 
about sixty-five years old now. Those bugs were slim 
most like a big ant, and they had shell wings that were 
black with a little white streak. There were lots of 
'em, but you could drive 'em off with a switch. You 
can't drive these bugs. There's no drive in 'em. 

"Things change, don't they? Even the weather 
ain't what it used to be. Every year the season gets a 
month later it 'pears. If we'd ketch a good open spell 
in the old times v/e'd get all our ploughin' done in 
March. But sometimes we'd have snows and blowin' 
and freezin' chuck down to the last of the month. 
Many a time I've been ploughin' and had to knock off 
on account of a storm. I'd leave the plough, and the 
snow would kiver it up. But we used to be through 
thinnin' our corn by the last of May, and we'd com- 
mence to lay by the crop right after the Fourth of 
July — quit work into it, you understand. Before the 
end of September the harvest would be all in, and winter 
begun and we'd have little scuds of snow. Now winter 
don't start so soon, but you got to look out for hard 
weather later in the spring, and you can sleep with all 
the covers on till June. Take it weather, bugs, and all, 
the farmin' man ain't got but a very little left when 
he's paid his help and his fertilize bill. He has to sell 



232 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

off all he's raised, and that leaves him down with 
nothin'." 

This colored man could hardly be vouched for as a 
competent authority on agriculture, and I quote with 
more confidence a town farmer with whom I later 
became acquainted. "Land sells higher and higher 
all the time," he said. "Well, sir, the farmers are 
wakin' up, and we get more out of an acre raisin' vege- 
tables and small fruits than we used to get out of a half 
dozen acres of corn; and I'll tell you another thing, 
Mister, that is drivin' the price of land way up — people 
with capital are not foolin' with coal and oil stocks as 
they did once, but if a man has a few thousand dollars, 
he says, 'I'll loan it out here on farm property where I 
know what I've got.' Farmin' has become profitable 
because the cities have grown so enormously. They 
look to us to supply 'em with food. We could n't do 
it by the old methods. In my early days we cut all 
our wheat with a cradle, and it was pretty near a day's 
work to cut an acre. Now we go in with a reaper and 
cut twenty acres in a day. Then we cut all the hay 
with scythes, and raked it up by hand. Riding- 
machines are common on the farms now, and the work 
is far less laborious. Fifty years ago oxen were the 
farmers' usual draught animals, but now they're too 
slow and have nearly disappeared. 

"Most of us are descendants of the old-time inhabi- 
tants and have been around these diggings all our lives. 
There's very few furriners, but we have a good many 



A Glimpse of Delaware 233 

negroes, and they're a very prosperous people. They've 
got schools, and they've got churches, and where a 
colored man ten years ago could n't pick up a dollar 
he can now pick up five. 

"When I was a boy this town had about a thousand 
inhabitants, and there was only two free schools in 
the place, and those two did n't amount to a great 
deal. We had 'Select Schools' that were better, but 
if you went to them you had to pay tuition every 
quarter. I'd venture to say that the little clapboarded 
free school buildings did n't cost over three hundred 
dollars apiece. The seats had no backs, and they were 
too high for the small children. So the little ones would 
sit with their feet dangling and kicking. Oh, mercy! 
we did n't have much comfort in them times. We 
were expected to be on hand to start the school day at 
eight in the morning and were n't turned loose till 
five in the evening. 

"School commenced in the fall in September and 
went on about six months. Out in the country they'd 
have only a three months' winter school with possibly 
another month in the summer if they could raise the 
money to pay the teacher. People had to have their 
children to work. Wood for the schoolhouse stove 
was furnished by the families that sent children. It's 
pretty skearce around here now, but 't was plenty then, 
and each family give a load. We had men teachers 
who were paid twenty-five to thirty dollars a month. 
They were men who followed teaching for a business, 



234 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

and often were well advanced in years. They did n't 
teach much but 'rethmetic and history and grammar and 
writing, and the books was few and poor; and yet if I 
only knew all there was in them books I'd be satisfied. 

"Most of the teachers were pretty severe. Generally 
they taught for what there was in it, and as a natural 
consequence they were cross. If a boy did n't behave 
the teacher would take him by the hand and rule him. 
I used to be punished that way or switched pretty 
often, and I needed more punishing than I got, but I 
did n't think so then. Some boys were always in 
trouble and they'd get terrible whippings. There was 
no inducement to study — nothin' to interest them, and 
they were much inclined to play truant. They'd sneak 
around and go fishing, even if they knew they'd be 
corrected for it. 'Tain't so now. The boys want to 
go to school, they have so much fun there. But, as 
the feller says, 'You can never tell much about a boy.' 
One of the most ornery boys that ever lived in this 
town is now captain of a big ship that makes voyages 
out to Chiny." 

On another day, in my quest for information, I spoke 
with a woman who was feeding some chickens that were 
in a coop near the street fence. She was proud of her 
chickens, but was still more proud of the garden back 
of the house, which she presently invited me to visit, 
so she could show me all the varied growing things that 
crowded its narrow limits. Her remarks ran on some- 
thing in this wise: 




The pump at the back door 



A Glimpse of Delaware 235 

"See that little cherry tree. She's loaded full and 
she bears every year. Next beyond is a dwarf apple 
tree, and that never fails to have fruit on it either, 
though we're too bleak here for apples to do first-rate. 
Most of what we raise we use in our own family, but 
I'm always sellin' a little somethin' or 'nother. Last 
spring I sold enough kale and mustard greens from the 
garden to buy a barrel of flour. I scatter the seed 
around in the fall, and it keeps coming up all the time. 
I'll give you some and you can sow it in your garden. 

"We've got a nice soil to work in hereabouts. You 
can't hardly find a stone large enough to throw and 
scare the birds away in this part of Delaware. My 
husband does the heavy garden work. That's him 
hoeing over by that grapevine. Here 's a bunch of 
ribbon grass, and it's a curious thing that you can't 
find two blades striped alike. That's a mystery, ain't 
it? And yet it's the same with people. As many as 
there are in the world no two look exactly like each 
other. 

"Next to the ribbon grass is an old-time lily. It 
used to belong to my great aunt, who died when she 
was in her eighties. The root is good for a salve, and 
people come to me from way back of Georgetown for it. 

"I'm a great hand for herbs. I guess I inherit my 
liking for 'em from my mother. She was a regular 
herb doctor, and they would send for her from far and 
near. 

"I work in the garden just about all the time in 



236 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

pleasant weather, even if I neglect things that ought 
to be done in the house. For thirteen years I had dis- 
pepsia and was troubled with heart trembling. My 
stomach was always cold and I was so weak I could n't 
walk across the floor without holding on to a chair or 
table. I nearly wore out our carriage going out riding. 
Somebody had to help me in, and I would sit with a 
pillow at my back, and yet I could n't bear to have the 
horse trot. It would shake the wind all out of me. One 
night I dreamed I saw our doctor just as plain as I see 
you now. He stood lookin' at me, and I said, 'Why 
ain't you givin' me some medicine?' 

"'Go out and feed your chickens,' he says, and went 
away. 

"Next day I remembered my dream, and I said to 
myself: 'That meant something. It meant for me to 
cure myself by outdoor exercise and air.' 

"I begun at once, and now I'm a well woman. I'm 
gettin' so stout I can't wear hardly any of the clothes 
I've got, and I can eat most any food — except of course 
something like boiled cabbage late in the day. No- 
body ought to eat that then. 

"I was raised on a farm, and I think I'm naturally 
active, but I don't work the way my mother did. She 
was very industrious, and though the family was large 
I never knew her to have a servant in her life. There 
was n't an idle minute about her. We'd make as much 
as sixty dollars some seasons knitting in the long even- 
ings after the farm was laid by. We grew sheep, and 



A Glimpse of Delaware 237 

mother handled the wool and spun it into yarn. While 
I was still very young I used to get my little straight- 
backed chair every evening and place myself right by 
her to pick wool. She learned me to knit my own 
stockings when I was eight years old." 

The woman's husband had now joined us, and he 
remarked: "Things were much like that in all the 
farm families. Where I lived the boys as well as the 
girls learned to knit and darn their own stockings. 
Everybody had homemade clothing that the women 
cut out and sewed by hand. The cloth for the men's 
clothes was what was called fustian, and for the wo- 
men's clothes it was linsey-woolsey. I would get one 
suit a year just before Christmas, and it did n't matter 
how it fitted if 'twas so I could get it on. There was 
no such thing as a vest for young boys — just pants and 
a jacket. Neither did we have an undershirt or drawers. 
I never wore any till I was grown up, and I did n't 
wear stockings except in winter. The boys in a family 
that lived right along side of us did n't wear either 
shoes or stockings the year through. Their feet would 
turn purple in winter and sometimes crack between 
the toes and bleed, but they claimed they did n't 
suffer from the cold any more than if they'd worn shoes. 

"Every fall the shoemaker came to our house to 
make us a pair of boots or shoes all around. I used to 
have little low shoes with just four eyelets in 'em for 
lacing, and they were lined with red sheepskin. The 
soles were pegged. The shoemaker would punch holes 



238 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

with his awl and drive in two rows of pegs right around 
the edge. We never had a box of blacking, but we'd 
turn the stove lid over and rub on soot from it with a 
brush. That made our shoes black, or at least they 
was n't white, you know. I would carry 'em under 
my arm on the way to Sunday-school to save 'em. 
Just before I got to the church I'd sit down in some 
pines that grew by the roadside and put the shoes on. 
I never wore 'em in the spring longer than I could help. 
The country then was all in timber and more protected 
than now, and as early as March we'd strip off our 
shoes and go for the woods and crawl in the hog beds 
in the pine shats. It was nice, in a sunny place where 
the wind did n't hit. We preferred to go barefoot even if 
we did have stone bruises and what they call cowitch." 

"The way my father had me wear my shoes," the 
wife said, "was to change them to the other foot each 
day so as to keep 'em from getting' lopsided. They 
were rights and lefts a little bit, but you would n't 
hardly know it. 

"Fashions didn't change much, and all of us, rich 
and poor, wore about the same kind of clothes. The 
women wore sunbunnets and aprons to church. I've did 
it. I used to think our linsey-woolsey dresses were beau- 
tiful, but when I was seventeen I wore mine to church 
in town, and they made fun of it because it was 
sheep's wool. So I would n't wear linsey-woolsey again. 

"We used to walk to church in the morning, but it 
was too much to walk again in the evening, and we'd 



A Glimpse of Delaware 239 

put the oxen to the cart and ride, and perhaps take 
along some of the neighbors." 

"I was a bound boy," the man resumed, "but I was 
treated same as the man's own children except that I 
did n't get much schoolin'. I stayed at home and 
worked when the weather was fit, and at the time I 
went into the army I could n't read or write. The 
man I worked for was kind o' rich, for he not only had 
a pair of oxen but he kept a horse. Oh, laws, yes! 
anybody that owned a horse was somebody. But most 
of the people around here was poor, and all they cared for 
was a little something to wear and to eat. Ther build- 
ings were very common. Cattle sheds, for instance, 
were roofed with brush on which pine shats were thrown. 
The shats would shed rain if there was enough of 'em, but 
they'd rot in two or three years, and then we had to take 
the oxen and haul more. The sheep and cattle in them 
days stayed outdoors mostly, and after a heavy snow 
we'd have to dig 'em out from where they'd crowded 
up to the hayrack or some other slight shelter." 

"At our place," the wife remarked, "we used to 
thresh our wheat in the cattle pound, or barnyard as 
some would say now. We'd rake everything off as 
clean as we could and then lay the wheat bundles in a 
circle, heads in. Oxen that the men would drive were 
used for treading out the grain, or perhaps two or three 
horsebackers went around on it. I've rode one of the 
horses threshing wheat a many a time. In the center 
stood some of the men with turning-forks keeping the 



240 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

wheat bundles stirred up. After a while they'd take 
the stock all off and upend the bundles and turn 'em 
right over. Then there was more treading. It was no 
long job. We did n't raise much. Why, my dear man, 
if we had ten bushels we thought we had a big crop. 
There's more raised now on one farm than was grown 
then in the whole county. Any bread made of flour 
we called cake, but we had plenty of cornbread. There 
were no stoves then with us, and we placed the corn- 
bread on a board and baked it on the hearth in front 
of the fire. 

"If my father went visiting after church, or most any 
time, the people he visited would probably send the 
children a little something to eat, and often, if he come 
home and did n't say nothing about what he'd brought, 
we'd wait till he took his coat off and search his pockets. 
Sometimes he'd carry around a biscuit two or three 
days before we got hold of it. By then it was right 
dirty and black, and so hard we could n't break it. But 
that made no difference. We'd take a hatchet, and 
chop it up, and it tasted good to us." 

After I parted from these friends I wandered out 
into the farming region that lies back of the town. Its 
fertility was very evident, and its flourishing crops were 
a joy to behold. Often there were hedgerows between 
fields or along the roadsides. These were decidedly more 
pleasing to the eyes than fences, but a man whom I 
accosted as he sat on the edge of his piazza, and who 
whittled the piazza floor very industriously while we 




A, 



A Glimpse of Delaware 241 

talked, said: "They ain't puttin' in no new hedges, 
and they're tearin' up the old. People are kickin' 
against 'em on account of the snow. We have a good 
bit of snow here some years, and the hedges ketch the 
drifts. I've walked from here clean in town on snow 
that blew in and filled the roadway up even with the 
tops of the hedges that were on both sides. We had 
to cut a road through for the teams same as a canal. 

"Another thing we got against the hedges is that 
they're wasteful. Take that field yander — the wheat 
next to the hedge is mighty slim. It's like havin' a 
field long side of the woods — the hedge roots take all 
the substance and moisture out of the ground. You 
lose more or less on a strip ten or twelve feet wide." 

But I found one advantage in the hedges — they 
protected the wild strawberries, and the berries were 
so abundant and delicious that I lingered picking and 
eating them a long time, and was tempted to continue 
in Delaware till the strawberry season was past. 

Notes. — An automobile route goes down through Delaware 
from Wilmington to Cape Charles, a distance of 212 miles. The 
roads are macadam and dirt. Wilmington, the largest city in the 
state, has extensive manufactories and considerable historic inter- 
est. About 13 miles to the northwest Washington was defeated by 
the British in September, 1777, in the Battle of the Brandy wine. 

Dover, 47 miles south, the capital of the state, was founded in 
1700 by William Penn. Between it and Felton, 12 miles farther on, 
are immense apple orchards. 

Old Lewes and some of the other towns at the mouth of the Dela- 
ware have a good deal of attraction as vacation resorts. 



XI 



ROUNDABOUT THE NATION S CAPITAL 

THE District of Columbia at first included a tract 
on each side of the Potomac, but that on the 
southern side was later relinquished, and the 
present District has an area of sixty-nine square miles. 
It has been the seat of government since 1800. At the 
end of the first decade it had a population of eight 
thousand and for a long time grew very slowly. Even 
down to 1870 the city was in a very backward condi- 
tion, but since then improvement has been rapid, till 
now it is one of the most comfortable and beautiful in 
the world. Both in itself and in its surroundings it is 
superlatively interesting. To be sure it is a made-to- 
order place that was carefully and formally planned 
at the very start, and this has inevitably resulted in its 
losing some of the piquancy that a more harum-scarum 
growth would have given it. Moreover, it still has a 
little of the aspect of a boy in clothes purposely made 
too large for him in order to provide for his prospective 
increase in stature — that is, the city as a whole does not 
yet match up to its splendid public buildings, and the 
amplitude of its parks, and the breadth of its avenues. 
But its rawness in this respect is now only incidentally 
apparent, though formerly it was a perfect scarecrow 



Roundabout the Nation's Capital 243 

and was called the "City of Magnificent Distances," 
its framework seemed so unnecessarily large for any 
prospective growth. The phrase continues in use but 
gradually has come to be applied in a praiseworthy 
sense as indicating the width of the city streets and the 
spaciousness of the parks and squares. 

The prosperity of the city depends on the fact that 
here are the government offices and the meeting-place 
of Congress. There are probably forty thousand army 
and navy officers and civil servants in Washington, and 
these with their families make a large proportion of 
the population. 

Of the government buildings the Capitol is very 
fittingly the most imposing in size. It is no less impres- 
sive in its grace of design and situation, and it is set 
amid grounds whose extent and arrangement add much 
to its architectural effect. With the crowning glory 
of its great dome it is surpassingly beautiful, no matter 
whence you see it. The main building with its original 
low-crowned dome was completed in 1827, and the 
wings and the present dome about forty years later. 
It covers three and a half acres and is on a hill ninety 
feet above the level of the Potomac. 

On this same height is the Library of Congress, a 
building capable of accommodating four or five million 
volumes, and of special interest to the sightseer be- 
cause of its sumptuous adornments of painting, sculp- 
ture, colored marbles, and gilding. These are often 
not all they might be in conception, execution, or 



244 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

arrangement, but the effect as a whole is decidedly 
imposing. 

The White House, a trifle over a mile distant down 
the straight, wide Pennsylvania Avenue, is as satisfying 
as the Capitol in its stately simplicity, and its generous 
grounds, seventy-five acres in extent. This was the 
first public building erected at the new seat of govern- 
ment. George Washington himself selected the site. 
He laid the cornerstone in 1792 and lived to see the 
building completed. During Madison's administration 
it was burned by marauding British soldiers, but the 
stone walls remained standing, and when it was restored 
the stone was painted white to obliterate the marks 
of the fire. It has commonly been known as the White 
House ever since. 

Near by is the treasury building, as if under the 
special guardianship of the president, with the expecta- 
tion that he would protect the garnered wealth of the 
people from the spendthrift inroads of Congress which 
meets in the Capitol. 

The vast structures necessary for carrying on the 
nation's business abound on every hand, but, aside 
from the Capitol and the White House, the most 
widely-famed architectural feature of the city is the 
Washington Monument. I fancy its fame is chiefly 
due to its tremendous height, for it is an absolutely 
unornamented, tapering marble shaft, more severely 
plain than a factory chimney. The obelisk was begun 
in 1848, but work on it was presently abandoned and 



Roundabout the Nation's Capital 245 

was not resumed until 1877. It was finished in 1884. 
From the floor to the tip it soars up 555 feet, and until 
certain recent skyscrapers in New York were erected it 
was the highest work of masonry in the world. It can 
be ascended either by a fatiguing climb of its nine hun- 
dred steps or by elevator. The walls are fifteen feet 
thick at the entrance, but gradually thin to eighteen 
inches at the top. It cost over a million dollars. The 
immensity of the monument is only fully appreciated 
when one stands right at its base, but it is seen to best 
advantage from an island park that borders the adja- 
cent Potomac. 

This park is a favorite resort of fisherman. I have 
seen them there before five o'clock on a summer morn- 
ing, and only a storm, or darkness when the day comes 
to an end, sends them home. Carp seemed to be the 
fish most commonly caught, and some of these that the 
anglers secured were surprisingly big fellows. 

Across the river on the Virginia hills, within sight of 
the city, is the Arlington National Cemetery, and any 
one with a belligerent inclination to settle disputes 
between countries, or between masses of people in the 
same country, by resorting to war would do well to 
visit this spot where most of the graves are those of the 
silent hosts who died in the war for the Union. The 
headstones stretch away in seemingly endless lines, for 
here lie buried sixteen thousand men, and this field of 
the dead is only one of many that the Civil War filled 
with the soldiers who succumbed to either bullets or 



246 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

disease. Among the various monuments probably the 
most impressive is that inscribed to the Unknown Dead. 
The letters chisled on the granite inform the onlookers 
that "Beneath this stone repose the bones of two 
thousand one hundred and eleven unknown soldiers 
gathered after the war from the fields of Bull Run and 
the route to the Rappahannock." In the southern 
part of the cemetery are buried the sailors who lost 
their lives at Havana in the blowing up of the Maine. 

Within the limits of the cemetery, on the brow of the 
hill that slopes away to the Potomac, a half mile dis- 
tant, is the fine old mansion that was the home of 
Robert E. Lee when the Civil War began. 

But the most interesting home in the vicinity of the 
Capitol is that of George Washington at Mount Vernon, 
sixteen miles to the south. It is easily accessible by 
trolley. The intervening country is rather common- 
place, except that half way you pass through quaint 
old Alexandria with its cobblestone streets and numer- 
ous ancient buildings. 

Mount Vernon itself is a paradise. It suggests the 
home of an English country gentleman of large estate 
and refined tastes. The house is large, serene, dignified, 
and looks down from a steep, terraced hill on the 
lordly Potomac. Everything is on a generous scale — 
there is unstinted lawn about the dwelling, and many 
venerable trees, and there is a big garden abounding 
in ornamental hedgerows and flowers in their season. 

The interior of the house is less delightful than the 




^3 



-x 



Roundabout the Nation's Capital 247 

exterior; for it is a formal showplace in which the 
imagination finds it difficult to restore the animation of 
life. Nevertheless, as a museum of articles connected 
with the life of the Father of his Country, and illustra- 
tive of well-to-do household appointments of the 
colonial period, it is extremely valuable. 

The house was built in 1743 by Washington's half- 
brother, Lawrence. When you observe it close at hand 
you become aware that its wooden sides are dominoed 
to imitate stone, a pretense that one can not help re- 
gretting in a building that otherwise is so admirable. 
Lawrence died, and Washington at length inherited 
the property. He came here to live and carry on the 
farm soon after his marriage in 1759. During the 
Revolution and his presidency of the new republic 
Mount Vernon saw little of him, but on his retirement 
from public office he came back to his farm, and it was 
in the beautiful old mansion beside the Potomac that 
he died in 1799, and his remains repose in a tomb in a 
quiet nook of the grounds. 

In this desultory account of the Capitol and its 
vicinity I only attempt to deal with a few salient fea- 
tures, but I would include among these, because of its 
picturesqueness, a canal that comes into the city from 
the west, high up on the north bank of the Potomac, 
and descends to the river by a series of locks. Just 
above the locks is a place where the boats tie up to 
await their turn for unloading. Sometimes a boat will 
be there a week or ten days before it can proceed. 



248 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

Usually a sail-cloth awning is put up to protect the 
cabin from the hot sunshine, and a plank is adjusted 
to serve for passing to and from the shore. The mules 
on the bank are tied to feed boxes built there for their 
accommodation. It is a sort of amphibian gypsy en- 
campment. Coal is the ordinary cargo, and the boats 
commonly go back light to the mines in the Cumber- 
land Mountains. 

Another feature of the Washington vicinity that 
appealed strongly to me was the Great Falls of the 
Potomac, fifteen miles by electric line from the city. 
The route is in the woods much of the way, and you 
see little of the river, and nothing of the falls until you 
reach your destination. Then you pass through a 
pleasure resort grove, and there are the falls before you. 
The pavilions and other buildings of the amusement 
park are back out of sight among the trees, and the 
artificial music of the merry-go-round cannot be heard, 
so much more powerful is nature's music of the roaring 
waters. The river channel is a chaos of jagged ledges 
amid which the stream has worn various tortuous 
channels, and the water surges down through the rocks 
in a smother of white waves, and then makes a sudden 
leap to a lower level. In floods the rocks are buried 
from sight, and the river tears along in a wild torrent 
that fills the narrow chasm below and obliterates the 
falls entirely. Above the rapids is a dam, but it is low 
and unobtrusive, and one sees the falls almost as much 
in a state of nature as when the aborigines possessed 



Roundabout the Nation's Capital 249 

the country. Indeed, I met one enthusiastic onlooker 
who declared that because of its unspoiled scenic 
setting the Potomac Falls was superior to Niagara. 

Besides the pleasure-seekers from Washington, who 
come to listen to the melody of the waters and watch 
their mad struggle down the rocky channel, there were 
quite a number of local farmers, who had resorted 
thither to fish for shad in the swift rush of the stream 
just below the falls. Here they have come ever since 
the region was settled, and no doubt it was a fishing- 
place of the Indians for untold years before that. The 
rocks in the steep ravines where the fishermen descend 
to 'the stream are worn smooth with the footsteps of 
those who have toiled up and down, and bear mute 
testimony to the attraction of the spot. You find the 
fishers busy on both sides of the river. They are 
armed with long-handled scoopnets, and dip and dip 
from the several points of vantage, making a slow sweep 
down stream. The rocks do not furnish many foot- 
holds suitable for the task, and at each dipping-place 
there is pretty sure to be a group of fishermen waiting 
their turn. A few townsmen also come to fish, but 
they use pole and line, and instead of shad they get 
occasional cat fish and sun fish. 

I clambered down a gulley and joined one of the 
scoopnet squads. In the intervals between fishing 
they retired from the water's edge and sat in a shadowed 
spot on the rocks talking, chewing tobacco, and spitting. 
Rubbish and fishscales were scattered about, and it 



250 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

was no more savory in its odors than are most fishing- 
places. 

One of the fishermen was a thin, spectacled old man, 
very quaintly rustic, with long white hair hanging in 
ringlets about his shoulders. This patriarch was the 
acknowledged scoopnet champion. To quote one of 
his companions — "He knows just how to do it, and 
he's mo' likely to get shad than any of us. Uncle Jim 
was an old fisherman when I was a boy, forty odd years 
ago, and he's caught mo' shad in this river than all the 
rest of the crowd here put together. Oh, my, yes! yes 
indeed! He never does anything else but fish in the 
fishin' season, and he can make a livin' and a half at it. 
He'll be here every day for the next month. 

"This is as far as the shad go up the river. They 
can't get over the falls. It's heavy exercise handling a 
scoopnet, but we don't keep at it continuous. Every 
man follers around and takes his turn. He dips a 
hundred dips, which takes about fifteen minutes. I 
believe Uncle Jim was the starter of that plan in his 
young days. If we get suspicious that a feller is not 
stopping when he ought to stop, some one sits back and 
counts to make sure whether he's cheating or not. I 
see a big fight about that one day over where them men 
are fishin' on the rocks opposite. But mostly those 
who scoop for shad are neighbors who live right around, 
and they are all honest. 

"Once in a while we scoop up a carp here, and it's a 
tolerable good fish if it's cooked right. You want to 




At the fishing-place 



Roundabout the Nation's Capital 251 

boil it with a little vinegar in the water. Then it tastes 
first-rate, but it's a very rich fish, and while it does 
well enough for a mess or two you soon get sick of 'em. 
Take shad though, and its good any old way. The only 
fault you can find is that it has a whole lot of bones, 
and them bones are stiff, too. 

"Hurrah! Uncle Jim's got one." 

There was a general shout of congratulation from the 
group, and we could hear the faint cheers of the men 
across the river, who had likewise observed Uncle 
Jim's success. A man in our group scrambled down 
and took the flopping, silvery captive from the meshes, 
and Uncle Jim, after one exultant smile, stolidly re- 
sumed his wielding of the scoopnet, and only stopped 
when he had finished his hundred dips. Then he gave 
way to the next man and came up the rocks, got out 
his knife, and dressed the shad. 

"The scales are right loose when the fish is first taken 
from the water," he explained, but they get tight if 
you let the fish dry. Shad are a pretty fish, ain't they, 
they look so nice and white? When I get enough 
of 'em to make it worth while, I take out the back- 
bone and salt 'em up so they'll keep till they're 
wanted. They're a whole lot better that way than 
fresh. But we don't scoop many here now. We 
used to get a thousand to one that we ketch late 
years. 

"Hello, Joe! caught any?" 

This greeting was to a new arrival. 



252 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

"No," Joe responded, "I been down to the riffle. 
Two was caught there, but I did n't get either of 'em." 

"The water's too muddy," Uncle Jim commented. 

"It was cl'ar early in the week, but every rain 
muddies it." 

I asked him if he could see the shad before he scooped 
them when the water was clear. 

"No," he replied, "muddy or not, we never can see 
down into the water enough to have any idee whether 
we're goin' to get a fish till the net brings it to the 
surface." 

The day was waning, and I at length climbed back 
up the rocks, marvelling that so primitive a scene as 
is presented at the Great Falls of the Potomac in early 
summer should be found within an hour's trolley 
journey of the big modern city of Washington, the 
nation's capital. 

Notes. — Climatically Washington is most delightful in May or 
October. If possible, be there when Congress is in session and see 
the Senate and the House of Representatives at work. 

Some of the features of the city not mentioned in the body of this 
chapter, yet which have exceptional attraction, are the Botanic 
Gardens; National Museum; Smithsonian Institute; the Bureau 
of Engraving and Printing, where visitors can see paper money, 
bonds, and stamps in the process of manufacture; the Corcoran 
Gallery of Art; Ford's Theatre on 10th Street, where President 
Lincoln was shot, and the house opposite to which he was carried 
to die, and which contains a collection of Lincoln relics; and the 
Union Railway Station, which in size and architectural charm is a 
fitting companion to the best of the government buildings. 



Roundabout the Nation's Capital 253 

Automobile routes radiate in all directions, but many of the roads 
are very poor. The road to Mt. Vernon, for instance, is so bad that 
it is well to make the trip by trolley, or, better still, by boat. One 
can, however, motor to Alexandria, 10 miles, without great discom- 
fort, though the dirt road is very rough. At Alexandria, which at 
one time aspired to be the nation's capitol, the traveller should 
visit the wharves and the marketplace, see the Marshall House 
where Colonel Ellsworth, the first man to die in the Civil War, was 
killed, and go into Christ Church where Washington and General 
Robert E. Lee used to worship. 

There is a good macadam road to Great Falls, 15 miles. Half 
way it crosses Cabin John Creek by a bridge that has a span of 220 
feet and, with one exception, is the longest stone arch bridge in the 
world. It was built to carry the Washington Acqueduct. Jefferson 
Davis was Secretary of War at that time, and his name was cut 
into one of the stones. When he became president of the Con- 
federacy his name was chiseled off, but many years afterward it 
was restored by order of President Roosevelt. The water supply of 
Washington comes from above the Falls. 



XII 



MARYLAND DAYS 

I WAS in that part of Maryland which Whittier 
describes in his "Barbara Frietchie" — a region of 
"meadows rich with corn," of "green-walled hills," 
and of orchards "fair as the garden of the Lord." 
Nevertheless, when I rambled out from one of the 
larger places into this bounteous farm region, I felt no 
especial disposition to linger, but went on and on until 
I came to where the billowing fields of wheat and corn 
began to merge into woodland, with a sturdy mountain 
ridge rising in the near distance. Here was a quaint, 
scattered, old-fashioned village, Smoketown by name, 
and I fell in love with it at first sight. Many of the 
houses were of logs, and certain of the rickety sheds 
and barns were thatched with rye straw. The public 
buildings included two plain, spireless churches, a 
schoolhouse, and a store. 

I had loitered along through the village to its farther 
borders when a dash of rain made me hasten to seek 
shelter in an adjacent log house. A sunbonnetted 
woman welcomed me into the kitchen and gave me a 
chair which I took care to place near the open door, for 
the odors of the apartment were rather dubious. There 
was one other room on the ground floor, and some sort 



Maryland Days 255 

of a low, cramped sleeping-place over head. Out in 
the yard were two small children. The increasing rain 
had put a stop to their play and made them want to 
come in, but they regarded me as an ogre in their path 
and stood looking from a safe distance. Nor would 
they come in when their mother ordered them to do so, 
and she had to go out and fetch them one at a time. 

The storm soon became quite fierce, rain fell in tor- 
rents, and there was an ominous gloom brightened 
momentarily by flashes of lightening, and the thunder 
boomed and muttered, while through it all the numer- 
ous flies in the kitchen buzzed monotonously. The 
furnishings of the room were meagre and the walls 
unpapered. A board partition separated it from the 
next room. There were three carpet-rag rugs on the 
floor. "I hooked them when I was at home before I 
was married," said the woman, by which she did not 
mean that she had stolen them, but referred to the 
process of making. 

On the walls hung a lantern, a broken mirror, an 
advertising calendar, and two patent medicine al- 
manacs. The older child climbed on the table and got 
the almanacs, whereat the younger protested vehe- 
mently that one was his. 

"Now you get down there," the mother ordered, 
and she restored quiet by seating herself in a rocking- 
chair, taking in her lap the baby, as she called the 
smaller urchin, and giving him his almanac. 

"Solly can't have your book," she said. 



256 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

I could look out of the door and see a long line of 
crocks turned bottom upward on the garden palings, 
and I made some comment on them that elicited the 
information that the family kept their "spreadin's and 
such things in 'em." 

"And what are spreadin's?" I inquired. 

She glanced toward me, surprised at my ignorance, 
and said: "Why! them are apple butter and peach 
butter and jellies and preserves. Yes, sir, we spread 
'em on our bread, but we use cow's butter, too, usually. 
Some of 'em we put in glasses, but if you want to make 
right smart, glasses cost too much. The crocks hold a 
gallon. Do you make apple-butter where you live? 
No? What do you do with your specked apples then? 

"We raise lots of peaches. My! we had an awful 
crop last year and cleared eleven hundred dollars, but 
we had to give half of that to the man who owns the 
land. Fruit and berries are the main crops here on the 
mountain. You'll find very little wheat, and we only 
grow enough corn to fatten our hogs in the fall. Our 
peach trees got quite a setback last winter. It was so 
everlastingly cold the bark was bursted off" of 'em, and 
a good many was killed dead. 

"Land is sellin' terrible dear around here. The man 
who lives jus' down the road from us asks three thous- 
and dollars for that place of hisn, and he'll get what he 
asks one of these times, too. Somebody will come along 
and buy it. There's forty acres, but it's growed up bad 
to briars and bushes, and the buyer'll have to clear off 



Maryland Days 257 

a mess of rocks and blast out stumps or plough around 
'em. The house is a little old log house like this one, 
and the stable is ready to fall down any time — 'tain't 
no good. 

"Mrs. Cromer sold her place the other day. She's a 
widow woman. Her man died long ago. There was 
only a small house, and not more than an acre of land, 
and you could n't farm all of that it was so wet, and 
yet she got nine hundred dollars. A man who cuts 
tombstones bought it. He said rents were so high in 
the town he could live cheaper out here, and, besides, 
his children would have a chance to earn something 
pickin' berries. 

"When the black raspberries are ripenin' fastest we 
pick fifteen or twenty crates every other day, and they 
raise lots of 'em on the mountain farms all along. We 
have to board our hired pickers, and some keep 'em 
over night yet. Often we get men from the railroad. 
They could earn two and a half and three dollars a day 
harvesting wheat, but they'd sooner pick berries. We 
have to pay the pickers a cent and a half a basket and 
furnish their dinner. It's kind o' hard farmin' when 
help is so dear. You can't get hands any more at less'n 
a dollar a day. Most men would sooner work in a shop. 
I have to get three breakfasts when we have hired help. 
The regular time for breakfast is five o'clock, but we 
are all done with ourn and ready to go to the field before 
the hands come for theirn. After they finish I have to 
get breakfast for the children. We have dinner at 



258 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

half-past eleven, and supper at half-past four. It's 
very seldom that the big ones eat again until the next 
morning, but the children gen'rally have something 
just before they go to bed. 

"The men you hire are always ready to quit at sun- 
down, but a man that's workin' for himself has to put 
in a good deal longer day than that, specially if he's 
going to market. There's three market days each week, 
and we start at midnight, or by one or two o'clock. 
You see we got eight miles to pull. The load has to be 
made ready, and a man don't get much sleep the night 
before a market day — only an hour or hour and a half. 
It's a lonesome road, though of course lots of wagons 
travel it on the way to market, and may be five or six 
will string along together. At one place on the pike a 
good many people have been robbed. It's in between 
two hills where there are no houses. One time a cousin 
of mine — Charlie, his name is — was going to market, 
and he was asleep on his wagon. It was Monday night, 
and on the night before he'd been to see a girl; so he 
had n't had much sleep for quite a while. His horse 
stopped, and he woke up, and there was a man standin' 
right at the horse's head. Charlie said it looked like 
the man had gray hair and a gray beard. The horse 
Charlie drove was blind, and if she was hit with the 
lines she'd jump, and away she'd go. It did scare 
Charlie like sixty, and he hit the horse with the lines, 
and off she went like a streak, and you betcher he got 
to town pretty quick. 




In the garden 



Maryland Days 259 

"The earlier you hit the market the better it is for 
you. Seems like the rich people and all try to get down 
on the market as early as they can to have first choice 
from the produce before it's been picked over, and lots 
of farmers are sold out by seven o'clock. The buyers 
are there as soon as it gets good daylight. Everything 
is fixed so the market is the best place to buy the nicest 
produce. Wholesale men dassen't come to buy there. 
It's against the law; and the farmers are not allowed 
to go and peddle the town from house to house until 
after ten. 

"An inspector is there every market day, and your 
butter can't be under weight — not a wee bit — or he 
takes it. 

"I never was on the market but seven or eight times. 
I don't like it. I don't like the way people does you. 
Often sales are slow, and you have to stand a long time, 
and you feel sleepy and cranky from losin' so much of 
your rest the night before. It may be that one day 
you'll get a good price and people will buy straight 
along, and the next day the price is perhaps most 
awful low. I've sold berries for five cents a quart, 
a'ready. The customers want to make out they're 
poor and ain't got money to pay what you ask. They 
tell you some other person has got the same stuff 
cheaper or nicer. Very few will pay your price until 
they go up and down the market a couple of times. 
They'll stand there five minutes and jew you and 
root all through your produce, and even then won't 



260 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

take anything, but will turn up their snoot and go 
along. 

"Sometimes they want you to trust 'em, but by 
Jiminy! if you do they tell one another, and they all 
want to be trusted. The trouble is you don't get your 
money for so long. We trusted a couple last year — a 
storekeeper and a woman — and we've run after 'em 
and run after 'em. We did get a dollar out of the 
woman, but she still owes another dollar. The store- 
keeper died in the spring and his business broke up. 
We tried to collect from his widow, but she said she 
did n't pay his debts. 

"You can sell most anything at the market — don't 
matter what it is. We make potato chips and these 
hyar what you call crullers to sell, and we bake bread 
to take, and we sell buttermilk. Saturday is a great 
day for selling flowers. We carry garden flowers, and 
we pick wild-flowers and make bouquets. When the 
arbutus is in blossom we can sell it at five cents a 
bunch as fast as we can hand it out. 

"One man here makes a business of getting things 
out of the woods, and he's at the market with 'em every 
Saturday. He don't raise none of the stuff, but gathers 
it all up wild. His name is Bud Lester. He lives in 
what used to be a schoolhouse, but he has divided it 
off so there's three rooms in it now. People along the 
mountain don't care much what sort of a house they 
live in just so they keep dry and warm. Bud has got 
ten children and they're pretty near all small, but he 



Maryland Days 261 

dresses 'em real nice for that many. Oh, he makes a 
good living. He'll dig the horse radish that grows wild in 
the little meadows and grates it and puts it up in baking 
powder tumblers. Sassafras is another thing he gets. 
He digs that there in the woods. Even freezing weather 
and snow on the ground don't stop him. He digs it 
anyhow. Late in the year he makes laurel wreaths, 
and cuts small cedars for Christmas. I've seen him 
sellin' mistletoe, but I don't know just edzactly where 
he gets it at. I saw him come down with a bagful of 
fern last week. It don't take a very large bunch for 
five cents. He digs 'em up root and all so people can 
plant 'em in their yards, and for the biggest and nicest 
bunches he gets forty or fifty cents. He sells bouquets 
of black-eyed Susan, and wild carrot, and dogwood, 
and such flowers. All winter he picks watercress that 
grows on the spring branches. There's plenty of it 
now, but it's gone to seed and has too many snails and 
bugs on it. He can't get much from the woods right 
in the dead summer time, and he has to hire out some 
then. You'll find him doing odd jobs around till after 
corn-cutting and husking are done. But he's a man 
that wants to make money without workin', and often 
he's goin' through the mountains huntin' gold when he 
might be earnin' good wages." 

By this time the storm had passed on, and the sun 
began to glimmer through the breaking clouds. I 
called the woman's attention to the jubilant singing of 
the birds. 



262 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

"Them birds are in our cherry trees," was her com- 
ment. "That's the reason they are singin' so. Up the 
hill we've got some of these hyar white cherries, and 
they're nice. There's a whole lot of meat, and only a 
little bit of a seed. But the birds take nearly all of 
'em. Are you thinkin' of startin' now?" she asked, 
as I rose to go. "Well, the shower is over, but they say 
if you get a storm in the morning you'll get one in the 
afternoon. That pretty near always comes true, too." 

The outdoor world was thoroughly watersoaked. 
However, a breeze soon shook the lingering drops from 
the tree foliage, and a hot, bright sun dried off the grass 
and the ground, and only in the ruts and hollows of the 
road did there continue to be pools and mud. 

I presently left Smoketown and betook myself to a 
byway that skirted the mountain. It was a narrow, 
unfenced road through a park-like forest of stately 
oak, hickory, and chestnut trees. After tramping 
several miles I suddenly emerged in a forlorn little 
hamlet, which, with its small log houses huddling close 
along the stony main highways and half-wild lanes, 
seemed a remnant of some former rude civilization. 
Back of the village loomed the highest part of the 
mountain, crowned by a gloomy ledge known as Black 
Rock. The hamlet itself was called Bagtown. One of 
the men I met told me how it got its name. "This has 
been an old settled place for years," he said, "and every 
fellow who lived here in the early days, when he went 
to Beaver Crick, where the nearest store was, brought 



Maryland Days 263 

home some provisions in a bag. There was n't nobody 
hardly kept horses, and they went back and forth on 
foot. A stranger happened to be here one time, and 
he see that all the men comin' from Beaver Crick car- 
ried bags, and he said, 'Well, this is certainly Bag- 
town;' and it has gone by that name ever since. The 
next village north on this mountain road is Jugtown. 
There they used to come home carrying jugs instead of 
bags." 

The afternoon was drawing to a close, and I re- 
turned to the lowlands and began to seek lodging for 
the night. A4y appeals at the farmhouses met with a 
cold response. The people were wholly unsympathetic 
and took not the slightest interest in my plight. They 
would go right on with their work and scarcely bestow 
a glance on me or offer any help in the way of suggestion. 
The truth of the matter was that, though their environ- 
ment was seemingly secluded, and their homes primi- 
tively rustic, the people were rich. They had no fellow- 
feeling for a roving stranger. 

I was plodding on discouraged by continued rebuffs 
when I observed a young fellow, a little aside from the 
highway, watering a horse in a stream that flowed 
through an outlying portion of a barnyard. Once more 
I ventured a request for lodging, and this time the 
response held a ray of hope. They sometimes kept 
travellers, and perhaps they would keep me, but I 
would have to go up to the barn and ask "Pop." I 
went through the straw-strewn yard to the barn and 



264 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

interviewed "Pop," who in turn referred me to the 
women at the house, and they, after warning me that 
"everything was all torn up" in house-cleaning opera- 
tions, agreed that I might stay. 

The house was a massive structure of stone backed 
up against a steep hill, and its surroundings were quite 
idyllic. Several enormous, thick-foliaged willows shad- 
owed it, and it had a very inviting aspect of cool com- 
fort and repose. In front was a narrow, grassy yard, 
across which a roughly flagged path led through a gate 
to the same stream that a few rods farther on invaded 
a corner of the barnyard. At the edge of the stream, 
beyond the gate, was a platform, and a dam just below 
made a pool which served as a washing-place. Along 
the pool's muddy borders were some lively colonies of 
polliwogs, or "mulligrubs" as they were called locally. 
Close by was a bench with soap and a basin on it, but 
the men and children preferred to resort to the platform 
and stoop and wash their hands and faces with a 
copious splashing of the water. The women used the 
bench, as a rule, though they often did minor washing 
of garments right in the pool. 

For drinking water they depended on a wonderful 
spring that came forth from the earth at the foot of 
the hill, between the house and the barn, and flowed 
away a full-fledged crystal brook. The spring's broad 
expanse was stoutly walled about, and two or three 
steps led down to it. On the verge of the brook was the 
springhouse in which the milk, cream, and butter were 



Maryland Days 265 

kept in stone or metal receptacles standing right in the 
cool water. In this vicinity, too, was the washhouse 
with its ponderous chimney at one end and an open 
fireplace inside. After the heat and stress of the day 
it was delightful to sit on the porch of this pleasant 
old mansion and hear the murmur of the stream, and 
the clear call of a Bob White off across a neighboring 
pasture field, and the domestic sounds indoors and out, 
and to watch the bevies of twittering swallows darting 
hither and thither above the trees and roofs, and the 
fowls and dogs and cats with which the place was popu- 
lous, and the workers coming and going about their 
tasks. 

The family consisted of a man and his wife, their son 
and daughter-in-law, and two small boys and a baby. 
By and by the farmer came to the house and brought 
out a United Brethren religious weekly for me to read, 
but its pages looked so glum and serious that I did 
little more than glance it through. Now and then I 
had a chance to chat with the women as they were 
getting supper. 

"It's nothing but cook and eat, cook and eat," the 
older woman said with a sigh. "There's lots of work 
on a big place like this, and it keeps a body hustling 
around. We've got a good bit over two hundred acres, 
and we harvest nice big crops of corn and hay and 
wheat. Oh my! we're goin' to have a fine crop of wheat 
this year if nothin' happens to it. This farm dates 
back an awful ways. The house was built when there 



266 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

was only woods here. It's very well situated to be 
comfortable no matter what the weather is. Last 
winter was won'erful cold — colder than was ever known 
by any of our old people; but we were protected by 
this hill on the north side of the house. In summer the 
water and the willow trees help to keep us cool. I have 
a heap of company then. Saturday week we're goin' 
to have a little setout here for our Sunday-school. 
Well, supper's ready." 

After considerable effort she got the members of the 
family together, and we ate. Then the women took 
their pails and went to the barnyard to milk, and I 
soon followed them and looked on from outside of the 
high rail fence. The two small boys lingered at the 
gate. The lesser one was a little toad of a fellow who 
was always tumbling down, and he was tired and sleepy 
so that he often had a spell of squalling, and his mother 
had to give him her attention to comfort him. The 
youngsters wore shoes, but no stockings. Overalls, 
shirt, and a straw hat turned up behind made up the 
rest of their costume. Presently the larger boy took 
off his shoes and amused himself by throwing them 
around till one of them went down the hill into the 
stream, whence I rescued it. 

The sun had set, and the dusk was thickening into 
night. Two turkeys flew up with a great flutter to 
roost in one of the trees. Several of the neighbor's 
boys were wandering about in the pasture meadow 
opposite the house. "They're lookin' for their gos- 




Coining from the spring 



Maryland Days 267 

lings," the shoeless boy said, "but I reckon the goslings 
have gone up the crick." 

There were five cows chewing their cud in a corner 
of the barnyard near a dilapidated but still sizable 
straw heap. The older woman stood and leaned against 
the cow she was milking. The younger sat on her heels. 
They put their pails on the ground. 

"Very few men around here does any milking," the 
former said. "Lots of 'em don't know how. Just after 
we were married we spent a year in Illinois and hired 
out on a farm. The men there thought it was a terrible 
thing for a woman to milk, but I said to 'em, 'I don't 
want any milk that you fellers milk.' I did n't like 
the way they slopped and sloshed around; and they'd 
curry the horses and go to milking without ever wash- 
ing their hands. There were no boys in my father's 
family, and we girls did the housework and helped Paw, 
too. I could drive a six horse team. I wa'n't the sort 
to lay around not doin' anythin', but, my goodness! 
them Illinois women looked lazy to me. The farmer 
we worked for was an old bach, and he said to my man, 
when we left him, 'I'll give you a horse and buggy and 
ten dollars if you'll git me a wife like yours. " : 

This evening her man had driven away on some 
errand. Harry, the son, busied himself feeding the 
horses and the "shoats." Alice, his wife, called to him 
that she had cut her finger and wanted him to take her 
place, but he did not. She only milked one cow, and 
that an "easy" one. Her energetic mother-in-law 



268 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

milked the other four and then hurried down to the 
springhouse, where six cats were awaiting her coming. 
They purred ingratiatingly, and she "slopped off" 
some of the warm frothy milk from the top of one of 
the brimming pails into a dish for them. The pails 
were soon emptied into the proper receptacles, and 
she swashed them in the brook and hung them on some 
pegs to dry. That done, she went to the house and 
tidied herself up. "I'm goin' over to our church at 
Smoketown practisin' tonight," she said. "We're 
gettin' ready for a special service next Sunday." 

Three young people had come in from the neighbors, 
and one of them, a young woman with a music book 
under her arm, went with the farmer's wife to the 
practisin'. The others were a neat young girl and a 
barefooted boy in overalls. Alice showed them the 
baby. "He's got Harry's frown and my complection," 
she said; "and just look at how big his feet are — ten 
cent shoes won't do for him a great while. I've just 
got the two boys off to bed. I tell you what, I'm kept 
busy now. Clarence ain't much more than a baby, 
and it's about all one person wants to do to look after 
him. Perhaps you think he can't travel fast, but he's 
out of sight in no time. Yesterday he and David were at 
the spring suckin' water through straws, and he fell 
in head over heels. The water was just up to his neck." 

"Who does the milking at your house now, Grace?" 
Harry inquired. 

"I milk three cows," Grace replied, "and Maw milks 



Maryland Days 269 

three and Tommy here milks one. Wes' used to help, 
but he's got above milkin' since he put on long pants 
and joined the church. You know he got religion lately 
at the big meetin' at the Beaver Crick Disciples Church. 
We all went every evenin' and I'd go to bed so tired 
they'd have to call me 'bout a dozen times before I'd 
get up in the mornin'." 

"What is a big meeting?" I asked. 

In response Alice said: "It's a revival meeting — 
that's the right pronounciation of it. 'Twas only last 
Sunday night that it broke up. They'd been havin' 
it for two weeks." 

"There was fifteen converts, I think," observed 
Tommy. 

"Naw, sir, more than fifteen," Harry declared, and 
he named them one by one and counted them up on 
his fingers. 

"I'm goin' up home to stay a while soon," Alice 
remarked. "They want me to help pick berries." 

"Her father's a trucker and lives on the mountain," 
Harry explained to me. 

"He says he don't know where he's goin' to get 
pickers at," Alice continued, "but there's a good many 
just in our family, and it's our way to all take hold and 
help. Even my brother Ned's little girl helps. She 
was only three last year, but she would pick right along 
with her mother, two boxes in the forenoon and two 
in the afternoon. That was her idea of what she ought 
to do, and as soon as the two boxes were full she'd quit. 



270 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

I picked one hundred and forty-three quarts of black 
raspberries one day. Ned picked the other side of my 
row, and he carried out all my berries with his'n, or I 
would n't have picked so many. I commenced that 
morning 'bout five o'clock and kept at it on into the 
evening till I could n't see to pick a bush clean. It 
threw Ned back carryin' out the boxes or he'd have 
picked more than I did. He can beat me all to pieces. 
He's got a sleight of hand at it, but, as papa says, his 
berries don't look as nice as mine. In his hurry he 
grabs off red ones, and he don't fill up his boxes like 
mine. 

"Papa ain't one who makes you work too hard. 
You don't have to get back to pickin' tireckly after 
dinner, but can rest half or three-quarters of an hour 
while the men are takin' the berries into the smoke- 
house. But of course we don't stop if it looks like a 
gust was comin' on. After supper some of us have to 
wash the dishes and take care of the peepies and milk 
the cows, and only a few go out picking. 

"Last year papa's raspberries were like good big 
marbles. I'd rather pick 'em than strawberries. You 
don't have to stoop so much and don't get so wet in 
the dew. We don't have many strawberries on this 
place, and today we bought some. I'm kind o' sorry 
we did. We got 'em of a Bagtown man, and every 
time he says a word he spits. I'm afraid the berries 
are not clean." 

Harry had taken up a local paper and was reading it. 



Maryland Days 271 

Alice asked him for the middle sheet. "They always 
tell about the weddings and parties on the inside," she 
said, "and that's what I like to read about." 

But Harry was loth to part with that interesting 
portion of the paper, and his wife induced him to sur- 
render it by snapping him playfully with a toy whip of 
the children's. 

Soon afterward I retired, and then the young people 
gathered about the family organ and enjoyed them- 
selves singing hymns. 

At half-past five the next morning I was aroused by a 
rap on my door and the announcement that breakfast 
was ready. The work day of the older members of the 
household had begun some time before, and, when I 
descended to the kitchen the women were carrying the 
food for the morning meal to the dining room. In the 
latter apartment I could hear the farmer reading in a 
mumbling monotone. Once he came out to the kitchen 
bringing a Sunday-school lesson paper in his hand and 
pointed out to Alice some religious statement that 
seemed to settle to his satisfaction a point on which 
they had differed. Then he went back and resumed his 
mumbling. 

I washed my hands and face at the pool in the crick, 
and wiped on a towel in the kitchen. When I finished, 
Harry said to me, "We're goin' to have pra'rs;" and 
the several members of the family who were scattered 
about the two rooms kneeled while the head of the 
house prayed long and fervently. 



272 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

As soon as breakfast had been eaten the men went 
off to the barn, and Mrs. Farmer remarked to me that 
she did n't get home from the practicin' till after eleven. 
"They was all talkin' about you there," she said. "The 
way you looked around and talked with 'em made some 
of 'em think you was takin' a census of the world, and 
others thought you was workin' for agriculture." 

I expressed surprise that she was able to start the 
day's tasks at the usual early hour after being out so 
late. "Well," she said, "if you've got a big lot to do 
like I have you must go at it whether you want to or 
not. I've sat up many a time sewing till twelve and 
one to have clothes for the children. We need an extra 
helper in the house, but hired girls are pretty dear. 
You have to pay 'em two dollars a week, and you can't 
hire a woman by the day for less'n fifty cents." 

She took up a pail and went out to fill it at the spring. 
I was looking in that direction from an open window 
when she observed a cat prowling in the chicken yard. 
"Scat cat!" she cried. "If I ketch you ketchin' the 
peepies 'twill be the worse for you;" and she heaved 
several stones at the creature, which scampered off in 
a panic. 

A few moments later she came in with the pail of 
water. "Daddy's goin' to plough the preacher's truck 
patch this mornin'," she said. "That truck patch is 
where the preacher of our United Brethren church 
grows his potatoes, and Lima beans, and the like o' that. 
He takes good care of it, but don't work in it every day. 



Maryland Days 273 

Some days he works out at carpentering. The United 
Brethren have two churches at Smoketown. One is 
radicals and one is liberals. All the difference in 'em 
is that the liberals allow their members to belong to 
lodges, and the radicals don't. The radicals contend 
that to belong to these here lodges and secret societies 
draws away a person's attention from religious things, 
and their support from the church. I was only a girl 
when they had their split on that subject. The church 
pretty near went under. Oh, they had bitter feeling 
at first, but now they're about ready to make up." 

When I left the old stone house where I had been so 
hospitably entertained I continued for some time my 
wanderings in the vicinity, for the region seemed to me 
particularly delightful. The highways were very narrow 
and were flanked by gray fences of post and rails or 
quarterboards, with sudden transitions to whitewashed 
palings in front of home premises. Life here was evi- 
dently quaint and quiet, like a leaf out of the past. It 
was a nook uninvaded by modern conditions — an eddy 
in the current of national progress undisturbed by the 
hurrying tides of business. Year after year the land 
produced great crops to feed mankind, and the money 
returns were generous. The people worked persistently, 
and their days of labor were long, yet they did not lack 
incidental breathing spells, and had the pleasures of 
prosperity, of interest in the neighbors, and of religious 
recreation and contemplation. 

At one of the old wayside homes the farmer showed 



274 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

me about the place. Among other things he called my 
attention to a great ash tree and said: "Ain't he a 
bird? — ain't he a dandy? How fur do you guess those 
branches spread? I think seventy feet anyhow. Yah, 
you bet! You see this grindstone? I fixed those cog 
wheels myself to make it go fast. But the stone is most 
worn away. I'm goin' to get a new stone and then I'll 
cut the buck (do rapid work). There's a lot of goslings 
yust goin' into the crick. Them's ourn. That hen 
hatched 'em out. Hear her cackle. Now she flies over 
the stream. She has a big time with 'em all right. They 
don't give her any peace, and she's runnin' around 
a-cluckin' all day long. She's afraid now they're goin' 
to drown, I reckon. 

"Look into this holler tree, and you'll see an old 
goose settin' in there. She found the place herself and 
drove out some tame rabbits that had been living in 
there with their young ones. 

"My wife's been makin' butter this mornin' — her 
'n' our oldest girl. Hyar's the churn in front of the 
springhouse. Yust step through the springhouse door. 
The water comes in at that little hole no bigger than 
your thumb, in the corner. Yah, and you may think 
I'm lyin' to you, but it always flows yust the same, no 
matter how dry or how wet the weather is. Last year 
eighteen pounds of butter that we had in hyar was 
stolen. A huckster had engaged to take it, but he was 
beat out. When he came there wa'n't none for him. 
I keep everything locked now. Ha, ha! There's a 




The wash-house 



Maryland Days 275 

clique of fellers up along the mountain who would help 
themselves a little too often, if I did n't. A short time 
ago one of the neighbors was goin' to have company for 
Sunday, and he shut up some chickens intendin' to eat 
a chicken dinner with his visitors. But Saturday night 
the chickens were stolen. We think we know the thief. 
He's got a wife and children, and they live good and 
dress good, and yet they don't work none at all. This 
feller goes in town every market day and he comes out 
with a whole big basket full of stuff. I been talkin' 
to the sheriff about this hyar feller. 'You folks in 
town,' says I, 'have got loads and loads of police. Yust 
watch the roads on market days and see what that 
feller brings to market.' 

"But the sheriff would n't do anything, and I'm 
goin' to see what I can do myself. If I ketch him 
stealin' on this place I'll fix him all right. I've got the 
guns, and I've got the ammunition. Come in the house, 
and I'll show 'em to you. I've spoken about my inten- 
tions to the preacher, and he wants me to use a shotgun 
and only yust burn the feller a little. But that would 
make him mad, and like enough he'd come and burn 
my buildings. No, I ain't goin' to shoot to scare. I'm 
goin' to shoot to kill, and he'll never trouble us any 
more. A man that steals is too ornery to live. 

"There's no need of stealing in these days. Every 
industrious man around hyar does well, and this is an 
awful rich settlement. The man I rented this place 
from seven years ago was worth nearly a hundred 



276 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

thousand dollars. I'd been living in another town, but 
I came to see him when I heard that the place was for 
rent. 

" 'Ach!' he says, for he always grunted every time he 
started to speak, 'I don't know nuttin' about you. 
What sort of a reputation have you got?' 

'"People talk about me yust like they do about you,' 
I said. 'Some'll tell you I'm a blame rascal, and others 
that I'm all right.' 

"'Ach!' he says, 'how many children have you got?' 

"'Six,' I says. 

"'Ach! that's too many,' he says. 

"'How many have you got?' I asked him. 

'"Ach! two,' he says. 

'"You're luckier'n I am,' I says. 'But what'll I do 
with mine — kill 'em?' 

'"Ach! well,' he says, 'I think you're a pretty good 
feller,' and he rented me the farm. 

"But for all he was so rich he was greatly worried 
for fear he was goin' to get poor and have to work for 
somebody, and at last he committed suicide. He was 
one of the nicest men I ever knowed. The landlord I 
had before I came here was rich, too, but he was 
grabbin' and scrapin' after every cent, I tell yer, and 
he was always gettin' into a splutter, with his mouth 
runnin' like a bell clapper. He thought it was yust 
throwin' away money when some of his relatives made 
a trip to California. 

"But what's the use of bein' so chinchy? Men come 



Maryland Days 277 

along asking for food or lodging — and they may be 
tramps or beggars, but whatever they are, we never 
turn 'em away. If a man is too dirty to sleep in the 
house we let him take a blanket or something like that 
and sleep in the barn. It's curious, but some of those 
fellers with no place to lay their heads except what the 
Lord gives 'em seem perfectly contented; and after 
all, what does it amount to, if you have this whole 
world and ain't happy?" 

This man's attitude toward the stranger and the 
unfortunate was akin to that of the family with which 
I had lodged. I suppose it was a matter of religion 
with them. They belonged to the sect of United 
Brethren or Dunkards. The latter word is derived from 
a German word meaning to "dip," and the Dunkards 
were originally German Baptists. They are particularly 
numerous in Maryland and the several states adjacent. 
They accept the Bible with extreme literalness and try 
to follow the example of Christ with technical faith- 
fulness. Their garments are very plain, yet are not 
so peculiar as to attract marked notice except in the 
case of the women, who, when they don their best 
clothes, wear a queer little bonnet without any trim- 
mings. 

One day I had a chance to observe a considerable 
number of Dunkards on a train. They were returning 
from an annual conference in a Pennsylvania town. I 
sat in the same seat with an elderly Dunkard who told 
me something of their beliefs. He acknowledged that 



278 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

the trend away from simplicity was irresistable, and 
said: "I don't think the men need to have clothes 
just alike. If your heart is all right, you can put on a 
good suit, and it ain't goin' to hurt you. But you can't 
go too far. You see the women's bonnets — they can 
have 'em any color and different in shape, if only the 
bonnets are modest and small. About the next thing 
they'll be after will be flowers and ribbons on the bon- 
nets. We'd feel obliged to take a woman to task if she 
was to put on one of the big hats that arc fashionable 
now. As a preacher said at the conference, 'A woman 
with her heart full of Jesus Christ would n't run around 
with a dishpan on her head.' 

"I don't believe a man who chews tobacco ought to 
be a delegate to the conference. The church don't 
approve of tobacco, or whiskey, or neckties, and we 
think dancing and all such stuff is wrong. I used to 
drink whiskey, but I knowed it was n't right, and I 
just made up my mind to give it up. How can you 
jump on a man for wearing a necktie if he can pick on 
you for chewing tobacco or drinking whiskey? 

"Parents are supposed to instruct their young ones, 
and train 'em, and keep 'em under if they can, but what 
the older one are used to don't always content the young 
ones. Some want an organ in the church, and we're 
fightin' that. Our churches are plain and substantial, 
with no spire, and I never see one that had a bell on it. 

"Every three months we have a council at which 
we're supposed to tell on one another if we know any 



Maryland Days 279 

have done things that ain't proper. A person who's 
shown not to have done right has to promise to do 
better, or out he goes. 

"If one of the brethren lends money to another he 
don't charge interest, but he expects to be paid back 
at the time agreed on. Perhaps the debtor don't do 
that. Then the other can tell some of the deacons, 
and they talk with the man, and if he still won't pay 
they throw him out. After than he can be sued. 

"We have a love feast every fall, and you've got to be 
pure, or you don't feel like steppin' up there and takin' 
the loaf. If I'm mad at you, and you're mad at me we 
have to make up. But in other denominations people 
can be so mad they won't speak to each other and yet 
will go through all the church ceremonies just the 
same." 

Some other details that I gathered from an outsider 
may be of interest in this connection. "I like to go to 
their fall meeting," he said. "It's worth while just 
for the singing. When all those Dunkards cut loose 
singing I'd as soon hear 'em as a crack band. 

"They go through the Lord's Supper just as it's 
described in the Bible. A mutton has been killed and 
a big kittle of soup made, or perhaps a piece of beef has 
been boiled because some don't like mutton. They sit 
down on benches along either side of tables in the 
church, and each person has a bowl of the broth. You 
ought to see those old fellows go down into it. You 
can hear their lips sippin' all over the church, and they 



280 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

take bites of bread big as my fist. After they finish 
eating they wash each other's feet. The men have 
their tub, and the women have theirs. A man will sit 
down and put his feet in the water, and another man 
with a towel fastened around his waist washes and wipes 
the brother's feet. Afterwards they kiss — yes, kiss 
right square in the mug and distribute their germs. It 
makes a sound about like slapping two shingles to- 
gether. They kiss and smollok too on Sunday when 
they meet at church. Seems kind o' queer, don't it? 
That reminds me of old man Broil. He always took 
the contrary side in an argument. He'd argue with 
the preacher till he had him wound up so tight it was 
like havin' him down with Broil's thumb on his mouth. 
Well, Broil said it would be a pity to have everybody 
believe alike. 'Why,' said he, 'if they did that, all the 
other men would want my wife and there'd be a dickens 
of a time.'" 

Maryland Notes. — A number of good pikes radiate from 
Hagarstown and make sightseeing easy for the motorist, and rail- 
roads and trolley lines are available to visit many interesting places 
in the region. The rude mountain settlements are only a few miles 
away. Twenty-six miles from Hagarstown, on the route to Wash- 
inton, is Frederick, the scene of Barbara Frietchie's exploit with the 
flag and Stonewall Jackson. Frederick, too, is of interest as the 
burial place of Francis Scott Key, author of "The Star Spangled 
Banner." 

The great battle of Antietam was fought 12 miles south of 
Hagarstown, and the battlefield of Gettysburg is 28 miles north. 

Two places in the eastern part of the state that are particularly 



Maryland Days 281 

worthy of a visit are Baltimore, the "City of Monuments," and 
Annapolis, the capital. The former is one of the chief Atlantic sea- 
ports. Before the days of railroad transportation it was the princi- 
pal center for the trade with the West. Goods and produce were 
carried across the mountains in huge broad-wheeled wagons, usu- 
ally covered, and especially adapted for travelling in soft soil. 

On the road to Washington, 10 miles from Baltimore, is the town 
of Relay, so named because here horses were changed that drew 
the coaches on the first railroad built in America. The cars were 
shanty-like structures, 1 2 feet long, with 3 windows on each side, 
and a table in the middle. 

The first American telegraph line was built from Baltimore to 
Washington, 42 miles, in 1844. 

In 1904 a conflagration swept over an area of 150 acres and de- 
stroyed property to the value of #70,000,000. 

On Monument Street are the buildings of Johns Hopkins Uni- 
versity, founded in 1876 by a bequest of #3,500,000 from a Balti- 
more merchant, whose name the institution bears. 

Among the former residents of the city was Francis Scott Key 
who wrote "The Star Spangled Banner" while a prisoner on board 
one of the British men-of-war which were bombarding Fort Mc- 
Henry at the entrance to Baltimore harbor in 1814. 

Edgar Allen Poe, another poet associated with Baltimore, wrote 
"The Raven," one of his most notable poems, while living here, 
and his tomb is in the graveyard of the Westminster Presbyterian 
Church. 

Quaint old Annapolis is 27 miles south of Baltimore. Its chief 
industry is oyster packing. In the grounds of St. John's College 
here is the famous "Tree of Liberty," with a girth of 30 feet and 
an estimated age of 700 years. Under it a treaty is said to have 
been made with the Indians by the early settlers. The town is best 
known as the seat of the United States Naval Academy, founded 
in 1845, the buildings of which are picturesquely located on the 
Severn River. 



XIII 

BESIDE THE RAPPAHANNOCK 

I WENT into northern Virginia with the especial pur- 
pose of visiting the Wilderness of Civil War fame, 
but on the way thither spent considerable time at 
the old town of Fredericksburg where another of the 
great battles of the war was fought. One of the first 
things to which my attention was called was a scar on 
a building near the railroad station "made by a South- 
ern bumbshell," and the town looked as if it had never 
wholly recovered from that battering of a half century 
before. It is high on the west bank of the muddy 
Rappahannock, and is a trading center for the farm 
country around. The long Main Street is lined by two 
and three story brick buildings with roofs that pitch 
toward the street and massive chimneys. In the 
residence districts are beautiful homes environed by 
a wealth of trees and vines, and many quaint or shabbily 
picturesque dwellings of both white and colored folk 
of the humbler classes. On the June day that my 
acquaintance with the place began a light breeze 
fluttered the leafage, and now and then a puff of wind 
stirred the dust in the streets, but the heat was never- 
theless oppressive, and everyone who could do so kept 
to the shade. 




s 

-^ 



**M 



O 



Beside the Rappahannock 283 

Tn my leisurely rambling I came across an old colored 
woman sitting in a broken-backed chair in front of a 
low-eaved brick house where poverty and squalor were 
very evident. Some of her one-garmented little grand- 
children were playing contentedly in the dirt before the 
door. I spoke with her and learned that she had lived 
in the vicinity all her life, and that at the time of the 
battle she had occupied a house five miles from the 
town "right up the plank road." 

"Me'n' my children and husband lived there," 
she continued. "The house was a log cabin with one 
room downstairs and one upstairs. We wa'n't slaves. 
My foreparents was Injun people, and we was jus' as 
free as you are. I hearn my ol' gran'mother tell where 
they come from, but I done forgot. 

"T'other day they were blastin' up rock back of the 
town, and I says, 'My gracious alive! puts me in mind 
of war time.' That was a great old time, I tell yer. The 
shells was flyin' over the top of my house — zee! zee! 
My Lord! I had a narrer escape, yes, sir. I would n't 
like to see that time no mo' if I could possibly help. I 
disremember what season of the year it was. It's been 
a right smart while since then, and I've been through so 
many hard, rough roads and seen so much trouble some 
things have gone off my mind. But I think it was cold 
weather and that there was snow on the ground. My 
husband was scareder'n I was. He run, but I hid. I 
went down to a neighbor's house where they had a 
cellar all bricked up, and I stayed underneath there. 



284 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

"After they got done righting I saw the wounded 
soldiers layin' up in the bushes moanin' and groanin', 
some with their legs shot off, and some with their arms 
gone. The next day I was out in the woods on one of 
the little bypaths, and I heard groans and saw a man 
lyin' in a holler with his feet right in the branch. I was 
scared nearly to death, and I took off and run as hard 
as I could go and hollered and told some soldiers. Yes, 
war time is an awful thing. 

"We had the armies here a long while, marching 
and camping. Some of the troops was colored, and 
when they got here I thought the world was comin' to 
an end they were so hard and so fiery. Perhaps a rush 
of soldiers would come at night and surround your 
house and order you to give 'em what you had or they'd 
take your life, and you'd give 'em the las' crumb to 
save yo'self. But gin'rally the soldiers was mighty 
good to me. If I was short of food they'd give me 
hardtacks and beef, special when they saw I had a 
parcel of little children. They all treated me very 
polite, both sides. Some low character might go off 
and get liquor and then be dangerous, but if a man was 
steady and had any principle he'd not trouble you, 
unless you was kind o' for'ard and frisky and encour- 
aged 'em. That wa'n't my way. I never had anything 
mo' to say to 'em than I could help. 

"They hired me to wash, and I did washing for one 
soldier who was a big rascal. He paid me off with a 
ten dollar note that was the prettiest thing I ever laid 



Beside the Rappahannock 285 

my eyes on, but 'twa n't any account. I was ve'y 
glad when they all went away, and I got shut of 'em. 
Some went on such sudden notice that they had to take 
their clothes wet right out of the wash. Often they 
could n't carry all that belonged to 'em. They'd have 
the greatest quantity of things — pants and shirts and 
such like sent from home — and they'd leave 'em behind. 
There was a big waste that time, but I saved right 
smart. 

"It look like war was comin' ag'in times are so rough. 
A dollar's worth of groceries used to last half a week, 
but now won't last a day. Why, jus' the common white 
meat- — I mean hog — what we call fat back, that you 
never see no lean in — costs fifteen cents a pound; and 
the idee of people havin' to pay a dollar a bushel for 
corn meal! My goodness, if they don't poke it onto 
you here!" 

A young negro who had his chair tilted back against 
the housewall a few paces away made the comment 
that, "There's nothing cheap now but soap and coal 
oil; and you can't eat the soap, and you can't drink the 
coal oil." 

"The worst of it is that they're knockin' down wages 
instead of raisin' 'em," the old woman resumed. "You 
hear the men grumblin', and sayin' they don't see how 
they can live. If a man with a family gets a dollar and 
a half a day, that'll only pay for their grub, and all 
the time he jus' gets right where he started at. On 
the farms the day wages are only sixty and seventy- 



286 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

five cents, or if it's a dollar you got to do two men's 
work." 

"They have to work from six to six," the young 
negro said, "and that's a long day — you bet it is!" 

"I went to Washington once," the old woman said, 
"and I stayed three weeks. But I was raised here, and 
it seem I would n't like no other place. My daughter 
was in Washington, and she was sick. She did n't 
'cease while I was there, but got better and so I came 
home, and the next day she died. 

"The only other time I been off was one day when 
I went across the river 'bout ten miles. I visited rela- 
tives who live over that-a-way, and they were mighty 
frien'ly and kind, but it wa'n't natural to me there. 
I won't go out of Fredericksburg again. Let me stay 
here and die. It won't be long, now. I suffer with a 
misery in my head. Some nights I have to get up and 
bind my head with a cloth dipped in vinegar, or else I 
could n't stand it till next day. That's made me lose 
my hair. It used to be real long, but now there's not 
much left. Yes, it's the same with me as with other 
people — we have so bad feelin's in this world sometimes 
it look like we can't live, but we get along tolerable 
well — things could be worse." 

About this time two of the younger members of the 
household returned from an excursion in the fields. One 
carried a pail of cherries, and the other a handful of 
daisies. 

"That's the way I used to do," the old woman said. 



Beside the Rappahannock 287 

"I'd climb the trees to pick cherries; and I'd pull the 
flowers and have 'em on the mantelpiece or bureau, 
and they looked mighty nice." 

One of the youngsters made some remark to her that 
she thought was not properly considerate, and she 
said: "Old people ain't much in the children's eyes 
now. Things are turned around altogether late years 
from what they used to be. When I was comin' along 
up, if a grown person spoke to me I'd mind without no 
jawin', and I never had to be told to do a thing but once. 
I see little small boys goin' along these days with a 
pocketful of cigarets and a box of matches. Smokin' has 
got common among the women, too. They use pipes. 
Befo' the war ve'y few women smoked, but they used 
snuff. They put it inside their under lip, and I thought 
that was the dirtiest-lookin' trick I ever saw. 

"We all worked hard then that was able, and if yo' 
was to go to our homes durin' the day yo'd find no one 
there but the old ones takin' care of the little children. 
I worked in the corn and wheat fields, and I grubbed, 
and I split rails. I'd help saw trees down, and bark 
'em, and split 'em to make bar'l timbers. I did n't use 
to turn my back to anything. But now I can only 
jus' sit around. It's hard scuff, certainly." 

A spectacled, middle-aged colored man from across 
the street had joined us. He came ostensibly to ask 
the people of the house if "you-all were going to Sunday- 
school tomorrow," but he soon observed the trend of 
my conversation with the old woman toward events in 



288 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

the past, and remarked: "I think you'd like to strike 
up with ol' man Grierson. The old-timey people have 
mostly died, but he was here when Noah built the ark; 
and he ain't dumb either. He'll tell you all that ever 
happened in these parts. I was born just before the 
war began, myself. My home was at Chancellorsville, 
and the soldiers came there and fought one day and 
then went away. What a change that one day did 
make in the look of the country! You would n't know 
it, everything was so torn to pieces. It was the awful- 
est sight I ever saw in my life. We could hardly realize 
what had happened. I went out into the woods with 
my mother, holdin' on to her dress, and we saw the 
limbs and trees and bushes all cut down by the chain 
shot that had gone slingin' around through 'em; and 
there were great piles of crackers, knee-high; and there 
were guns, and harness and clothes strewed about; and 
there were breastworks that I'd climb up on and jump 
down from. I told my mother I wanted some of them 
guns, but she did n't know whether they were loaded or 
not, and when I picked up one she'd say: 'Put that 
down. It'll kill you.' But I took some of the bridles 
home and made a swing. 

"I was still only a little boy when several of the 
neighbors come hurryin' into our house in great excite- 
ment and said that Richmon' had gone up. So I ran 
out and looked up hopin' to see it. I thought it was 
some cur'us sort of buzzard or alligator — I did n't 
know what it was. Well, I never saw nothin', and I 



Beside the Rappahannock 289 

went back and spoke to 'em about it; but they told 
me I did n't have no sense and to go and set down. 

"That was a great war. There was no jokin' or 
foolin' about it, and, by comparison, our war with 
Spain was nothin' at all — or only a sporting thing that 
did n't amount to the crack of your ringer. 

"The war made a great change in the condition of 
the colored people. Way back yonder, in the ol' time, 
when we had slavery, if a white man found a nigger 
had any learnin' he did n't have any use for him at all. 
If he caught you with a book in your hand he'd give 
you a thrashin'. But now you can't go and get any 
good job unless you have some learnin'. You take 
forty years ago, and we all had to dig in the ground, and 
work was done with only the roughest sort of tools. 
You did n't need any education to handle them. But 
that ain't so with all the sulky ploughs and machines 
they use now; and yet there are still men who don't 
know enough to be dissatisfied with their ignorance. I 
could show you a man in this town who works with a 
shovel digging sewers. He can't read or write, and 
shovelling is about all he's good for, but you ask him 
what he does for a living, and he'll tell you he's working 
in the sewer business, and he's as proud of it as the 
man that's bossing him. 

"We all send our children to school, but I don't 
think they have much liking for it. When the school 
year is about to start they'll bust their brains out gettin' 
ready to go, but they soon get tired of attending day 



290 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

after day. It's the nature of some of 'eni that you can't 
learn 'em nothin' nohow, and they can't get to recog- 
nize A from a cornhouse top. They've just got the Old 
Harry in 'em and go off fishin' or something of that 
sort when they ought to be in school. Very likely 
others in the same family will be perfectly steady and 
grow up smart as a steel trap. I've got six children, 
and I understand 'em. When they make believe 
they're sick and want to do this, that, and the other 
thing instead of goin' to school I have to foller 'em 
up pretty close. I say to 'em, 'You've got to go to 
school and behave yourselves, or I'll whip you and 
write the teacher word to whip you again when you 
get there.'" 

Another negro with whom I talked was a dilapidated 
individual who was loitering at the back door of his 
home in a different section of the town. His trousers 
were patched and ragged, his suspenders were broken 
and pieced out with string, and his shoes were so worn 
and tattered it was a wonder that he could keep them 
on his feet. His house was as shabby as the man him- 
self, but it was rather pleasantly situated, facing a park 
where the trees stood as thick as in a wood. "This is 
the tightest time I ever knew," he said in a discour- 
aged tone. "It makes a man feel bad when he can't 
get money to pay his debts, and people are after him all 
the time. I used to raise most of the meat we needed, 
but they've kind o' cut out hog-raisin' in the center of 
the town. They told me to quit on account of this 




A farm gait 



Beside the Rappahannock 291 

hyar little park, because people settin' down thar 
would n't like the smell. 

"Whether I'm earnin' anything or not the man that 
owns this house wants the rent every month, and I 
have to give him half of what I raise in the garden. I 
been renting this house for four years now, and in all 
that time I don't believe the owner has spent five cents 
on it. I've had to do all the repairing myself. I wish 
you could see this back room when it rains. The water 
po's in hyar so you could jus' as well be out doors. The 
worst of it is that I've lost a child every year since I've 
lived hyar. They've put a sewer in this street, and I 
believe that creates disease. If it was forty or fifty 
feet underground like it is in the big cities it might be 
all right, but hyar it's only five feet. Still, you've got 
to go when your time comes. We all live as long as we 
was intended to live. 

"Do you see those big sheds beyond the park? 
That's where the people from the country put their 
wagons and horses. They get hyar one day and go back 
the next. Among the sheds is one building where they eat 
and sleep. They take in a blanket and lie on the floor. 
There's a cookstove in it they can use. They bring 
their own eatin', but buy feed for their teams. Some 
come forty or fifty miles from way up in the Blue Ridge 
Mountains. I've seen as many as twenty-five wagons 
in the sheds. There's always lots of 'em Chuesday 
nights, but by Friday morning all the fur people have 
done wound up their business and started for home." 



292 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

While I was in Fredericksburg I attended a Sunday 
morning service in a negro church, and though there 
were certain crudities and peculiarities it was in most 
ways a credit to the intelligence of the people and their 
preacher. In the afternoon I mentioned this service to 
an elderly white man with whom I chatted as he sat 
on the sidewalk in front of his house. When our con- 
versation first began his wife had opened the blinds of 
a window and looked out to see who was talking to him, 
and presently a youthful daughter came out and sat 
down at the foot of an adjacent tree. 

"The nigger meetin's ain't what they used to be," 
the man commented. "I've seen 'em jumpin' up and 
knockin' over the benches when they were gettin' 
religion. You don't find much of that now except out 
in the country. They've got a little mo' sense. But 
time was when we'd pass by a white pra'r meetin' to 
go to the colored church and see the darkies carry on. 
Yo'd kill yo'self laughin' at 'em. I've got so blamed 
weak laughin' I could hardly stand up. I lived for a 
while down in Caroline, and one night I and a feller 
named Gid Ashley went to a darky meetin'. The 
preacher, he got preachin', and the people begun 
hollerin', and some of 'em would drop down, and yo'd 
think they was dead. Gid was scared, and he said, 
'Let's get out of here,' but I made him stay. The 
friends of those that had fainted would rub 'em and 
pat 'em and shake 'em, and as soon as they forgot their 
religion they'd come to. 



Beside the Rappahannock 293 

"In a business way yo'll find that as a rule the colored 
people are prosperin'. A country darky who has a 
little farm is apt to buy more land, a small amount at 
a time, until he gets a good big farm; or at least he'll 
stir around and take care of what he's got. Here in 
town most of the darkies own the houses where they 
live. The men work, and the women work, too. Sup- 
posing a woman cooks at some white man's house — 
she'll get pretty good wages, and they'll give her the 
leavin's from the table. Bigbugs don't want food 
brought on a second time. So the cook gets it, if she 
has a family, instead of its bein' dumped out into the 
slop barrel for the hogs, or taken down to the river. 
She'll carry it home in a basket every night, and the 
family'll never have to buy a mouthful to eat. That's 
how a good many darkies get up in the world; and 
I'll say this for 'em — that some of their women here 
dress better'n the whites and are a good sight prettier. 
But I don't like their mixin' in with us, and wish they 
was somewhere by themselves. 

"I was raised out in the country, and my great ambi- 
tion, when I was a chunk of a boy, was to become an 
expert horseback rider. But our place was small, and 
we only kept one little mar'. Father hired the plough- 
ing done in the spring, and kept the mar' to look at. 
You never saw no one so choice of a horse as he was. 
Wunst in a while he and mother drove up to visit her 
folks, or they might drive to church, but he was so 
careful of the mar' she never had to raise a trot — -that 



294 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

would be too fast — and if she was goin' down a slant 
he held her in as tight as yo' please. He never took 
her out for fun, and in cold weather, if there was ice or 
crusted snow that might cut her ankles, he would n't 
even drive her to mill, but would put the bag up on his 
own back and carry it. We had to have the corn ground 
to make our corn bread. We would n't eat wheat 
bread more than once a day in old times, and we'd 
never think of havin' any when we had b'iled victuals. 
We used to have ash pones common befo' the war, and 
if they are baked right there ain't no better bread made. 
Mother would get the corn pone ready, scratch a hole 
in the fireplace ashes, and brush that part of the h'ath 
clean. Then she put the pone down there on two or 
three big cabbage leaves, covered it with other cabbage 
leaves, and drew the ashes and coals out over it. The 
pone would bake as brown as if it had been in a stove, 
and if yo' ate it in milk it was first-rate. I'd like it yet 
if we had a fireplace to bake it in. 

"But I was speakin' about father's mar'. He kep' 
the stable door locked. Bless your soul! he thought 
she was too good for me or anybody else to ride horse- 
back. But after a while I made up my mind I'd ride 
whether or no. So one day when father was away I 
drew out the staple and got the door open. I wa'n't 
big enough to reach up to the mar's head, and I had to 
get into the trough to put on the bridle. Then I climbed 
up on the side of the stall and got on her back, and, 
unbeknownst to mother, went out and rode up and 




~y 






bo 



Beside the Rappahannock 295 

down the pike. But father came home sooner than I 
expected and caught me at it and thrashed me. That 
did n't do no good. I kep' on takin' rides, and so 
finally he sold the mar'." 

"He was mean to you," the man's daughter com- 
mented. "I don't believe he went to heaven." 

"After I married," the man resumed, "I come to live 
here in Fredericksburg, and pretty soon the war begun. 
In the battle that was fought here there was lots o' 
destruction — Lord-a-massy! chimbleys knocked off, 
roofs broken in, and some houses so smashed up that 
afterward they tore 'em to pieces and used 'em for 
firewood. At first the troops fit across the town for 
a while. Then our force fell back on the heights and 
the Yankees follered us. But there we had the advan- 
tage of 'em pretty smartly and soon run 'em back into 
the town. They were often rather rough to the people 
who lived here, but perhaps that was partly because 
the Secesh wa'n't very polite to 'em. They'd come 
right into the kitchen huntin' for somethin' to eat, and 
they'd take the corn bread off the griddle with only one 
side done and eat it just as it was. My shack wa'n't 
bothered much by 'em. Four or five did start for to go 
down cellar where I had a good bit of harness and grub 
and tools packed away, but a feller in the Northern 
army who knew me come along just as they was pryin' 
open the cellar door to begin their ransacking. He 
reported to an officer and got a guard appointed to see 
that no harm was done on my place. A good many of 



296 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

my neighbors had run off and left their houses, and 
they lost most all they had, but I reckon the citizens 
got as much as the soldiers did." 

On the opposite side of the street was a small, low 
building a few paces from the rear of a house. It had 
a great outside chimney at one end, and its mossy 
shingles and weatherworn walls proclaimed its age. 
"That's an outdoor kitchen," said my companion in 
response to a question of mine, "and it's been standin' 
there at least a hundred years. In the old ancient days 
all the well-to-do families had 'em. The poor could n't 
afford such a luxury. Everything for the family table 
was cooked in it both winter and summer. Perhaps 
you don't think a kitchen outside of the house is con- 
venient, but the goin' back and forth was just as handy 
to the older heads as takin' a drink of coffee. Yo'd 
find the most comfortable little room you ever see in 
there, with brick laid up between the studding to make 
it cool in summer and warm in winter. They use a 
stove now, but the joists and floor of the little loft above 
are all blackened with smoke from the old fireplace." 

The man's wife had come to the door. "It looks like 
we was goin' to have a storm," she said. "Well, that's 
what we expect when the weather is as hot as it is now. 
Late in the summer we have a storm mighty near every 
evening, and if the whole heft of it don't hit us we at 
least get the tail-end of it. We have lots of hailstorms, 
too, that tear up trees and everything." 

As I strolled back to my hotel the clouds gradually 



Beside the Rappahannock 297 

covered the sky with a threatening gloom. Presently 
night came, and I could see the lightning blinking in 
the distance and hear the grumbling of thunder. Then, 
after a prelude of gusty wind, the rain came driving 
down, and the people who were walking on the streets, 
or sitting on porches and sidewalks to enjoy the cool air, 
scudded to shelter. 

The next day I went ten miles west on a narrow 
gauge road — "a little old one-horse affair" — to Alrich's 
Crossing. Here was a board shed that served as a 
station shelter, and some straggling piles of sawed 
lumber. Not far away was a poor little house with a 
small clearing about it, and the rest was ragged forest 
from which all the large timber had been removed. 
But I did not have far to go to strike a main highway 
that was bordered by occasional farms where the land 
had been long cultivated and chastened into productive 
smoothness. In one of the yards was a colored woman 
washing clothes in some tubs set in the shade of a tree, 
and I inquired of her the way to the Wilderness Battle- 
field. 

"This hyar is whar the battle of Chancellorsville was 
fought," she said, "but yo' keep right on up this pike 
road till yo' come to a li'l' ol' log cabin. Then yo'll be 
up in the big woods, and thar was fightin' all aroun' 
thar." 

I tramped on into the big woods. The day was 
warm, but a light breeze was stirring and served to 
temper the heat somewhat. Cloudships were sailing 



298 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

across the blue sky, and up there where the misty fleet 
drifted so serenely I now and then saw a buzzard soar- 
ing on tireless wings. Birds were warbling in the trees, 
and grasshoppers thrilled the air with their strident 
notes. The road was one of those semi-barbaric thor- 
oughfares of red clay which get deeply rutted while 
watersoaked in winter and spring, and later dry to 
adamant. Where the mud had been of the bottomless 
variety a rude sort of corduroy had been put in. The 
bordering woodland had been devastated by the lum- 
bermen, and in places fire had nearly completed the 
wreck. Evidently the cattle were allowed to browse 
in its unfenced tangles at will, and I often saw some of 
them among the trees or nibbling along the shaded 
borders of the roadway. 

Within a mile of Chanccllorsville is a monument in 
the woodland beside the pike marking the spot where 
Stonewall Jackson was fatally wounded by his own 
men. The woods were not continuous, for every little 
while I would come to a scattered group of houses, 
mostly of logs, and these simple, unpretentious old 
log dwellings made the finicky new frame houses seem 
ugly by contrast. At one place was the little, barn- 
like Wilderness Church, and in an adjoining field a 
man and a barefooted boy were planting corn. The 
man said some sharp fighting had occurred in the vi- 
cinity, and that they often found bullets. "I've seen 
some this mornin','' he added, "but I just let 'em lie 
where they was." 







nHHHHBSB 



The Wilderness Church 



Beside the Rappahannock 299 

Bullets were less commonplace to the boy, and he 
fumbled in his pocket and showed me several that he 
had found within the last hour or two. 

"This fight was only a small affair," the man said. 
"The Yankees were down along a little branch near 
the church. It was in the evening, and they'd butchered 
quite a lot of beef there and was cookin' it. Jackson 
come in behind and surprised 'em. I guess old Jackson 
was pretty slick. They did n't know he was anywhere 
around, and they'd stacked their arms. When the 
Rebs come whoopin' and yellin' the Yankees left every- 
thing and run. But the Rebs did n't pursue 'em. They 
were so near starved that they stopped right there and 
e't up the meat in a hurry. An old lady lives in the 
next house up the road. She can tell you all about it, 
for she was here at the time." 

I went on, and at the next house, inquired for the 
old lady of a little girl who was sitting in the yard under 
a big cherry tree. To my surprise a voice responded 
from the tree, and up there among the branches I saw 
a sunbonneted woman picking cherries. "You're 
askin' for that little girl's grandmaw," she said, and 
directed me to the house. 

The walls of the house were of logs which had been 
hidden from view by weatherboards. When I went in 
I found the floors very uneven and sagging, and there 
seemed to be a bed or two in nearly every room, but 
all the appointments of the dwelling were very clean 
and tidy. In one room was a fireplace, still used in cold 



300 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

weather. As I saw it, however, it had been put in 
order for the summer. The andirons had been carried 
out to the shed and the stones of which it was made had 
been given a coat of whitewash. Apparently there had 
been a sort of whitewash carnival recently on the place. 
They had gone over the room-walls with it, and the 
outside walls, and the barns, the sheds, the fences, and 
even a row of stones beside the path that led from the 
house to the highway. 

The old lady and I were soon discussing the war. 
"From the time it began," she said, "there were soldiers 
goin' up and down the road all the time, and by and by 
a Union army come here, and General Devens made this 
house his headquarters. Well, one afternoon, a deer 
ran out of the forest and jumped right over a soldier 
and ran on across the field. Then there was a great 
commotion and yellin', and the soldiers tried to kill 
the deer, but I don't think they got it. 'Twould n't 
have been much good if they had for 'twas May, and 
the animal would have been right lean, I reckon. Deers 
were plenty then, but it seemed strange this one should 
come runnin' out of the forest the way it did. I was 
always anxious for fear something would happen to my 
husban', who was a guide for Jackson, and when I 
heard the shouting and firing I did n't know but they'd 
caught him. It scared me most to death, and I hurried 
to the do' and just then a spent ball struck the facin' 
of the do' and fell at my feet. I've thought since that 
ought to entitle me to a pension. 



Beside the Rappahannock 301 

"Some of the Yankees got up in the tall locust trees 
that grew in the yard spyin' the country over in the 
direction the deer had come from, and General Devens 
said there was goin' to be fightin'. He was very kind 
and had one of his men take me and the children to a 
neighbor's house where there was a cellar we could go 
into. We stayed there over night and till near the end 
of the next day without anything happening and I 
begun to think of goin' home. 'Bout six o'clock in the 
evenin' we was havin' supper, and everythin' was so 
peaceful, when they commenced firin' up in the woods. 
A little Northern boy — a drummer — was in the kitchen, 
and he jumped up trembling. He knew there was goin' 
to be trouble, and he said, 'What would I give to be at 
home ! ' 

"I couldn't help but wish he was there with his 
mother, he was so small. He grabbed up his drum and 
ran out. But he had n't got across the yard before I 
thought he was killed. A piece of shell broke his drum 
all to pieces and stunned him. By then thousands of 
bullets were flyin', and we all went to the cellar. When 
the fight was over, and we come out, the drummer boy 
was gone. He wasn't killed, and after the war he got 
home and married and had a large family, so I was told. 

"It was lucky that I was at a neighbor's where there 
was a cellar, for the house here was right in the midst of 
the fight and was hit by a good many bullets. You can 
see the holes in the clapboards yet. The war ended 
finally, but the place was stripped of nearly everythin', 



302 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

and I hope and pray there'll never be another raiding 
through here." 

Notes. — Fredericksburg is 54 miles, from Washington, half way 
to Richmond. It is interesting to the visitor as a quaint old South- 
ern city, and still more so as the scene of a fiercely-fought battle in 
December, 1862. Back of the town is a huge national cemetery in 
which are 15,000 graves, and near by is a large Confederate 
cemetery. 

Washington spent his boyhood near Fredericksburg, where his 
father was agent for some iron works. The family dwelling was a 
four-room house with outside chimneys, just below the town on 
the other side of the river. It is said that Washington distinguished 
himself as a boy by throwing a piece of slate across to the opposite 
bank. Here his mother died in 1789. 

The battle of Chancellorsville was fought in May, 1863, 11 miles 
to the west, and a few miles farther away in that direction occurred 
the Battle of the Wilderness just a year later. The Wilderness 
battlefield can only be reached with some difficulty. 



M 



XIV 

JUNE IN THE SHENANDOAH VALLEY 

'OST of my time in the valley was spent at 
Luray, not because that particular vicinity is 
superlatively attractive, but because I wanted 
to see the world-famed Luray Caverns. The town is in 
a region of big, sweeping hills, and its chief street climbs 
an especially steep slope. At a little remove, to east 
and west, are long ranges of lofty mountains, some 
bulwark-like and level-topped, but the majority running 
up into rounded or sharp-pointed peaks. They are 
tree-clad clear to the summits, and as I saw them in the 
warm, hazy days of early summer they were always 
dreamily blue and serene. Indeed, the region had an 
almost Swiss-like charm in its combination of pastoral 
lowlands and ethereal heights. 

The caverns are a mile east of the town beneath the 
summit of the highest hill in the neighborhood. They 
are remarkable for their size, but still more so for the 
wealth of the calcite formations they contain. In the 
latter respect they are unexcelled. The circuitous 
course over which visitors are taken is a mile and a half 
long. As soon as you go down the entrance stairway 
into the depths, no matter whether there is summer 
heat outside or the frosty keenness of winter, you are 



304 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

in a cool, pure atmosphere that remains always at 
about fifty-four degrees. Stalactite and stalagmite 
ornamentations abound everywhere in the labyrinthine 
passages and chambers, and a system of electric lighting 
makes it possible to see this to admirable advantage. 
It is a weird place — so silent and so fantastically decora- 
tive — full of impenetrable shadows, chasms here, 
gloomy rifts there, and now and then a pool of water 
that seems like liquid air it is so clear. You go on 
with resonant footsteps, your guide's voice and your 
own echoing in the stillness. You gaze on the pend- 
ants from the roof and their reverses rising from the 
floor, the fluted columns and draperies, and the stony 
cascades with their marvellous variations in color, 
and you feel that you are in the royal chambers of 
the monarchs of the underworld. The formations 
often strikingly resemble animals, vegetables, and 
other objects of the realm above ground, and the 
guide calls them all faithfully to your attention un- 
til you get the impression that you are in a petrified 
museum. 

Somewhere in the journey the guide allows you to 
learn what absolute darkness is like by turning off the 
lights. The gloom was not simply black — it was blank, 
and I stood in an illimitable void so far as the sense of 
sight was concerned. 

"There was one time," the guide said, "that I took 
a visitor through here, who was a great large Dutch- 
man — about the type of man you see driving around on 



June in the Shenandoah Valley 305 

a brewery wagon, and when we had made the rounds 
he asked, 'Was it made, or did it come so?' 

"Another visitor would n't go in the cave at night 
because he said he'd rather see it by daylight." 

Just then the guide halted and threw the light of the 
oil torch that he carried down into a depression beside 
the path. "Look," he said, "and you'll see the bones 
of an Indian boy almost imbedded from sight in the 
lime. They must have been there for at least one 
hundred and fifty years. Thirty-five feet above us 
another passage opens into the one we are following. 
No doubt the boy was groping along that passage, and 
when he stepped off the edge of this wall up there he 
fell to his death." 

One of the chambers to which a sentimental interest 
attaches is the ballroom. "This is where we have 
weddings," the guide explained. "There've been 
seventeen of 'em. It's just a freak idea, and started 
with the wedding of a girl who wanted the ceremony in 
the cave because she'd promised her mother she 
would n't marry any man on the face of the earth." 

The discovery of the caverns dates back only to 
1878, and the story of it as commonly related in the 
town runs about like this: 

"On the far side of the hill east of the village was a 
cave the existence of which was known from pioneer 
times. The Ruffner family were the first settlers of 
the valley, and one day a member of this family went 
out hunting and failed to return. Searchers scoured 



306 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

the region for nearly a week and then found the missing 
man's gun and powderhorn at the mouth of this cave, 
and rescued from the cave itself the almost famished 
hunter. 

"The years passed, and there at length drifted to 
Luray a wandering school-teacher and photographer 
named Stebbins. His photograph outfit was in a wagon 
to which a pair of horses could be hitched and draw it 
from town to town. He would maybe stay two or three 
months in a place — as long as he could do well — estab- 
lished on some vacant lot. Stebbins knew something 
of geology, and he thought there was likely to be 
caverns of considerable extent in the vicinity of the 
old RufTner Cave. This impression he confided to 
Andrew Campbell, a native of the town who had been 
all over the country hunting and fishing, and was a 
keen and capable woodsman, but who got along from 
day to day with very little provision for the future. 
He accumulated an interestering fund of information, 
but while he was out roaming around perhaps his wife 
was at home wondering what the family would have 
for dinner. 

"The upshot of the consultation with Stebbins was 
that Campbell and his brother Williams and the school- 
master started out cave-hunting. Sink holes draining 
into underground cavities were common in the region, 
and the three men ranged about examining them for 
possible openings. At last, one August day, they 
turned their attention to a sink hole in a wheat field 




The Shenandoah River 



June in the Shenandoah Valley 307 

on the north slope of Cave Hill. It was some fifteen 
or twenty feet across and twelve deep, and was over- 
grown with briars and bushes. When a man had a 
sink hole like that in cultivated land he would use it 
to get shut of a lot of stumps and stones. It served as 
a kind of dump, and a good deal of refuse had been 
thrown into this one in the wheatfield. Formerly it had 
been much deeper. The men were poking around in it 
when one of them exclaimed, 'Why, here's cold air!' 
"The air was coming out of a hole about four inches 
in diameter, and the men worked with a will to clear 
out the rubbish. As they went deeper they used a 
bucket attached to a rope to pull up the dirt and stones. 
In five hours' time they had made an aperture large 
enough for a man to crawl through. This gave access 
to a black abyss below, and Andrew Campbell, clinging 
to the rope, descended till he found a firm foothold. 
Then he let go of the rope, lit a candle, and looked 
about him on the unexpected splendors of the chamber 
to which he had gained entrance. He left his com- 
panions so long to their conjectures that they became 
uneasy at his absence, and his brother presently de- 
scended in search of him. Together the two went on 
for several rods to where they were stopped by water — 
water so cle'r you'd hardly realize it was there. This 
has since been called Chaplin's Lake, because a fellow 
of that name stepped into it up to his knees. The 
Campbell brothers agreed to keep quiet about their 
discovery and when they came up to the surface they 



308 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

told Stebbins and some loafers who'd gathered around 
to see what v/as doing, 'Oh, there's nothing in it!' 

"But when the three partners in the exploring enter- 
prise were by themselves the facts were revealed to 
Stebbins, and later they returned to make a more ex- 
tended exploration of the caverns. The land under 
which the caverns lay was a bankrupt property soon 
to be disposed of at a sheriff's sale, but the three ne'er- 
do-wells who knew the secret of the cave had no money. 
Probably not a man among 'em could raise twenty- 
five dollars. So they divulged their discovery to another 
man who had means, and persuaded him to back them. 
Such land was then worth eight or ten dollars an acre, 
and they bid it in for about twice that to the great 
surprise of the townsfolk. Their friends naturally 
guyed them a good deal over their bargain, and they 
could not stand the ridicule and prematurely revealed 
their reason for buying. That roused the heirs of the 
bankrupt property to start a lawsuit, and two years 
later the property was restored to them. It was then 
disposed of a second time, but instead of bringing 
about three hundred dollars, as it did before, the 
seventeen acres this time sold for forty thousand. 

"Meanwhile the three discoverers had opened up 
the caverns and exploited them with some success, and 
enjoyed the only period of prosperity in their lives. A 
spirit of adventure had led to the finding of the caverns, 
and the management of them afterward by Stebbins 
and his comrades was simply childish. If a man came 



June in the Shenandoah Valley 309 

to see the caverns, as like as not Bill Campbell, who 
was supposed to act as guide, would be lying on a 
bench feeling too lazy to make the trip, and he'd put 
the man off. It seems a pity that the discoverers should 
not have had larger returns, but doubtless the public 
fared better for the shift to another management." 

The geologist of the trio "drifted around from pillar 
to post," and died in a neighboring town a public 
charge. Andrew Campbell is still a resident of Luray, 
and I met him. He was evidently confident that he 
knew the caverns much more thoroughly than those 
now in charge. "They'll tell you there's practically 
no life in the cavern," he said, "but I've seen tracks 
of coons, 'possums and bears in there — thousands of 
'em; and I've seen places where animals have stayed, 
most likely to get away from the cold above ground in 
winter. Rats and mice live in there. I've set traps 
for 'em, but they were too slick for me. A very little 
fly, and a spider, both almost microscopic, are found 
in the caverns, and I've come across bats hangin' upside 
down. Where the animals come in, or where the air 
comes in, no one can tell, but it's plain that the en- 
trance we found ain't the only one." 

Another subject which loomed large in Mr. Camp- 
bell's experience was the Civil War. "I was a Union 
man who fought on the Southern side," he said. "Just 
before Lincoln was elected I raised a flag in this town 
to show my sentiments. On the cloth was painted an 
American eagle as big as a turkey, and he had a scroll 



310 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

in his mouth that bore the motto, 'The Union must be 
preserved.' I hoisted the flag on a spliced hickory pole 
that was one hundred and fifteen feet high; but after 
the state seceded the pole had to be cut down. 

"Then they conscripted me, and I volunteered to 
go as a musician. They kept me three years. At first 
I played the fife, and later a tenor drum. I was with 
Stonewall Jackson. Yes, old Jackson heard me beat 
the drum many a time. We made some great marches. 
He did n't let much grass grow under his feet while he 
was on the move; but I did n't like him. He was a 
regular tyrant, and he did n't care how many of his 
men were killed if he only carried his point. That's 
the kind of a hairpin he was. Generally the discipline 
in the Southern army was not very strict, and if a man 
thought he ought to go home for a while he went. But 
he wa'n't a deserter, because by and by he'd come back. 
That way of doing things did n't suit Jackson, though, 
and if a man from his command was caught goin' off 
home he'd order him shot. I've beat more'n one man's 
dead march on the way to the spot where they was 
goin' to seat him on his coffin and shoot him. 

"People don't realize what war is. Some of 'em 
ask me about my drummin' along in front of the troops 
and leadin' 'em into battle. But that would be a 
ridiculous thing would n't it? Each side wants to get 
in the first lick, and they try to steal up and take the 
other by surprise. When there's likely to be fighting, 
the troops make a little noise as possible, and if it's a 




A jerry 



June in the Shenandoah Valley 311 

dusty time they march in the hollow at the side of the 
road, as they approach the enemy, lest the dust should 
be seen and betray them. No I did n't furnish music 
durin' the fightin'. I helped in the field hospital." 

The region that environs Luray is decidedly at- 
tractive to a rambler, and I made several interesting 
excursions into the outlying districts. One day I came 
to a grist mill, which I was informed was "tolerable 
old," but it had been built since the war to replace one 
that had been burned by Yankee raiders. It was 
primitive in itself and in its surroundings. A big out- 
side overshot wheel furnished power, and near by was 
a ford where the creek in the hollow encountered the 
highway. Vehicles and equestrians went right through 
the stream at the ford, but foot-travellers crossed on a 
slender bridge high up above the water with steps giv- 
ing access to it from either side. In the shade of some 
trees at the door of the mill several teams were hitched, 
and there I came across a burly farmer lounging on his 
wagon seat, waiting for his grist. We were soon dis- 
cussing the characteristics of the countryside, and he 
said: "I reckon harvesting will be in full blast in about 
two weeks. Thar's a heap of wheat raised in this 
country hyar. Some of these fellers will raise thirty- 
five acres or more, but others raise as low down as half 
an acre. A man with just a little patch will cut it with 
a cradle, but most use a binder. 

"Round hyar now the crops are just as fine as a man 
would want to look at, but last summer we had an 



312 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

awful drought. Usually we raise a little bit of corn to 
sell, but not any was shipped away last year. It was 
the poorest corn year I ever remember — indeed, it was. 
Some of our best farmers had to buy corn. 

"The people through this section are right smartly 
mixed up, but they used to be all German and Dutch. 
You'll find those who can talk Dutch even yet. There's 
a good many poor people with only an acre or two of 
land. They have to work out for a living. But thar 
ain't any great difference between the comforts enjoyed 
by the man who hires and the man who is hired. They 
eat 'bout the same food and wear 'bout the same sort 
of clothes. In some cases the hired man don't work so 
hard as the feller he's workin' for does gettin' him to do 
things. Some hands takes interest in their work and 
do as much alone as when the farmer is with 'em. Others 
try to beat all they can. They fool around and want 
the sun to go down as soon as possible. On the farms 
near town they work on the ten hour system, but out 
in the country it's from sunup to sundown, and in busy 
times they work as long as they can see. The farmer 
boards his hands, and pays 'em fifty cents a day as a 
general thing, but during haymaking, harvest, and 
thrashing you have to pay a dollar a day. 

"I've got two men a-workin' for me. They live half 
a mile away and come for breakfast about sunup. I 
get up at daylight. That's half after four now. If I 
want to make an early start I get up at four; and even 
in winter I'm hardly ever up later than five. But every 



June in the Shenandoah Valley 313 

farmer works accordin' to his own notion, to suit him- 
self, and some are mo' rushing than others. They can 
keep body and soul together if they work hard. Yes, 
thar's opportunity to make dollars now whar thar was 
to make cents when I was a boy. It's a man's own 
fault if he suffers. Mostly the farmers are a pretty 
industrious people, always a-goin'. But thar's excep- 
tions. Some are almost too lazy to move. 

"The first thing in the morning the men go to the 
field and bring the horses in, give 'em a little grain, 
curry 'em, and gear 'em up, and we give the hogs some 
corn and slop, and perhaps we grease a wagon. We 
do that while the women folks get breakfast. When 
we've eaten, we put the bridles on the horses and go to 
work, but we don't work hard and steady all the day. 
The horses get tired, and we stop every couple of hours 
or so to blow 'em — that is, we let 'em stand and rest; 
or perhaps we'll stop on our own account and go and 
get some water to drink. But under the ten hour 
system the workers keep movin' along and ain't sup- 
posed to sit down to rest at all. 

"I unhook at half after eleven, and if thar's a right 
smart distance to go it may be half after one when I 
get back. 'Bout the time the sun is goin' behind the 
mountain I quit, take the horses home, and turn 'em 
into the field, but in winter they stay in the barn and 
I give 'em hay and bed 'em. 

"After supper a man will go to the sto' if thar's a 
sto' anywhere near. I loaf at the one near my place a 



314 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

good bit. We talk about the weather and about our 
wheat and grass and corn, and if thar's any gossip in 
the country we talk about that. Sometimes we talk a 
little politics. I advocate the men I think the most of, 
and others advocate the men they think the most of, 
but politics ain't run right high for ten or twelve years. 

"Sometimes we take a day off and go on an excur- 
sion, or a circus may come through hyar, and we go to 
that. A good many of the boys shoots marbles or 
plays ball, and on Sunday, these late years, the ma- 
jority of the youngsters goes courtin'. They start in 
courtin' at an earlier age than they used to. Nearly 
every young feller has a buggy that he'll be sportin' 
around in every pleasant Sunday. He'll drive to church 
if thar's preaching somewhar not too far away, and 
after the service he'll take a little ride with his girl. 
In the evening the youngsters will gather in one of the 
homes to talk and laugh and carry on. When the 
gathering breaks up a feller that has a girl is likely to 
sit up with her till midnight, and if the case is very 
serious he'll be mighty apt to stay longer. 

"We have plenty of different churches. Thar's New 
School Baptist, and Old School, and Methodists, and 
Dunkards, and the Campbellites who call themselves 
Christians or Disciples, and the Seventh Day Ad- 
ventists, and the Faith Healers who are right strong 
in places. A man ought to be able to choose something 
to suit him among them all. Thar's very few infidels 
but now and then you'll strike a man who talks that-a- 




The great chimney 



June in the Shenandoah Valley 315 

way. He's as likely to go to church as the rest of us, 
though I s'pose it's out of curiosity and to get some- 
thing to argue about. In our country churches we 
generally have preaching once a month. Each preacher 
has several churches in his charge and takes 'em in 
turn. Most of us goes quite regular, and on Monday 
when a couple of fellers get together you'll hear one of 
'em say, 'Well, what'd you think of the sermon yester- 
day?' and perhaps the other'll say he don't believe that 
way, and they'll have considerable of a discussion." 

Just then the miller came to the door and announced 
that the grist of my farm friend was ready. So the 
farmer loaded his wagon and drove away, and I re- 
turned to the town. As I was loitering through one 
of its outlying streets I stopped to speak with a young 
man who was sitting on the shady side of his house in 
the narrow front yard. I commented on the pleasant 
farming country I had been seeing. "Yes," he re- 
sponded, "the farmers are prosperous and they live 
good. They raise their own fowls, and if they feel like 
havin' one they know where to get it. They grow their 
own fruit, and they're sure to have a good bunch of 
cows, so they always can have nice milk and butter and 
cottage cheese, and the like of that. I was raised on a 
farm, and it kind o' goes tough to live in town. But 
we're not so badly off as we might be. D'you see those 
big earthenware jars hangin' in the sun on the fence 
pickets? Those are preserve jars, and we're gettin' 
ready to fill 'em, and they're hangin' out there so if 



3 16 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

there's any germ about 'em the hot sun'll kill it. You 
take the people in this country, they don't buy pre- 
serves. No, they get the stuff out and put it up them- 
selves. They don't think they live if they don't put up 
their own fruit. In our family there's just me and my 
wife and two children, but we put down twenty-five 
jars like those. We generally make eight or ten gallons 
of apple butter; and we mus' have at least a couple of 
each of all kinds of berries. The season is just on now, 
and we'll soon be putting down our strawberries and 
cherries and currants. 

"When we make apple butter all the neighbors come 
in to help us peel the apples. They make a frolic of it, 
and are here through the afternoon and on into the 
night till ten o'clock. We do the peeling and coring 
with a machine, and finish by hand. It takes quite a 
number of bushels; and we plan to make enough of 
the apple butter so we can send messes around to the 
folks who came in and helped. That's like when people 
butcher in the country — they do it at different times, 
and send meat to each other. In that way they have 
fresh meat all the fall." 

The next day I made an excursion that took me 
through the negro quarter of the town, and among its 
various phases of picturesqueness I recall a sign ex- 
tending across the sidewalk which read 

GEN. ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT FRY 
RESTAURANT 



June in the Shenandoah Valley 317 

Another local sign which I found quite fascinating 
was this: 

CONCREATE 

BLOCKS FOR 

SALE ALKIND 

I went on over the hills and down to where the limpid 
Shenandoah flows through the depths of the vale. The 
region had become increasingly wild, and the houses 
few and far between. The final dwelling on the road 
to the river was a big, neglected old mansion that was 
little more than a gaunt timber skeleton. Most of the 
roof was gone, and the building was plainly a rotten 
wreck not worth repairing. Yet a colored family that 
included numerous children lived in it. A man I met 
on the highway said in explanation: "Last spring we 
had a right hard wind hyar that taken off part of the 
house, and dog-goned if I don't believe that the darky 
who's rentin' the place would rather get wet than work 
a little mendin' the roof." 

The meandering road at last brought me to a ferry, 
and on the opposite side of the river was a rude, flat- 
bottomed scow, but there was no sign of a ferryman. 
While I was considering the possibility of getting across 
a buggy arrived from the direction I had come, and a 
man got out and remarked: "When the boat is on that 
side a skift is generally left on this side so a man who 
wants to cross with a team can go over and get it. The 



3 1 8 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

ferry is free, but you have to manage gettin' back and 
forth yourself. Sometimes the water floods the bottoms 
and we can't cross at all. One feller, who wa'n't as 
keerful as he ought to 'a' been, tried it when the water 
was a little too high, and the rope broke — the rope 
that goes from the boat to the cable that you see up 
thar in the air swung across the stream. He drifted 
down mighty near half a mile befo' he got to shore. It 
skeered him some. I live right over thar not far from the 
landing. I'll see if I can make any of the folks hear me." 

He called again and again with a clear, high-voiced 
whoop, and by and by there was an answering call, 
and a boy came down to the boat and poled it over to 
us. On the other side were a few farms scattered along 
the base of a mountain range that rose in a steep and 
lofty wooded height close behind, and there were log 
houses, and the conflict with the wilderness seemed 
still not ended. There is something peculiarly delight- 
ful about a region where the over-refinements of civiliza- 
tion have not penetrated. Closeness to nature and 
simplicity and the necessity of rough living appeal to 
one's own primitive humanity. I found the people very 
generously sociable, and on the most slender acquaint- 
ance they would show me freely about their premises 
and urge me to partake of such fruits as were ripe. 

On my way back a friendly farm family who were 
just sitting down to supper invited me to share the 
meal with them. The man ushered me into the dusky 
rag-carpeted sitting-room where we waited while the 



June in the Shenandoah Valley 319 

women got ready a few extras for their guest. Fried 
eggs and pork were the mainstay of the meal, but they 
set forth a most impressive array of jellies and pre- 
serves, and cut an extraordinary cake, six stories high, in 
alternate layers of pink and white. The heartiness and 
warmth of their hospitality won my affection, and my 
visit with them will always remain one of my pleasant- 
est memories of the charming Shenandoah Valley. 

Notes. — The Shenandoah Valley is a part of the so called Valley 
of Virginia which stretches between the Blue Ridge and the Alle- 
gheny Mountains southward from the Potomac for about 300 miles. 
It has much natural beauty, and the added interest of the campaigns 
of Jackson, Sheridan, and other leaders here in the Civil War. 

The Caverns of Luray furnish the greatest attraction in the valley 
to tourists, and are justly ranked among the most wonderful natural 
phenomena of America. They are unequalled for their profuse 
decorations of stalactites and stalagmites. Five miles to the east 
is Strong Man, one of the highest summits of the Blue Ridge. A 
trip to its top makes a pleasant one-day horseback excursion, and 
the fine view from its top is an ample reward. 

The scenery of the valley as one travels south is increasingly 
picturesque, and 100 miles from Luray in this direction is the famous 
Natural Bridge. 

From Hagarstown, Maryland, to Staunton, Virginia, at the head 
of the Shenandoah Valley, 134 miles, there is a stone road all the 
way. But 19 tollgates occur in this distance, and a toll of 15 cents 
is collected at each. Winchester, 42 miles from Hagarstown, 
changed hands 70 times during the Civil War. Four of the changes 
took place in a single day. Sheridan's ride was from Winchester 
south along the Valley Pike to Cedar Creek. Luray is 14 miles east 
of the main route. Go to it from Newmarket. The road passes 
over Massanutton Mountain, and is difficult in wet weather. 



XV 



WEST VIRGINIA RAMBLES 



I HAD followed up the south branch of the Potomac 
to a region where the narrow valley was hemmed 
in by mountain ranges. Woodland predominated 
on the steeps, and the green forest billows often heaved 
skyward in uninterrupted succession. But many of the 
milder, nearer heights had been shorn of their natural 
tree growth, and formal peach orchards had been 
started. These orchards occupied the topmost slopes 
and summits and made such mountains look as if they 
had been scalped. As seen from the valley the peach 
trees appeared very diminutive, even when full-grown, 
and you might fancy you were looking at a potato 
patch. The slopes on which the trees grew were often 
surprisingly precipitous. Any grade that would hold 
soil was practical, and it seemed quite possible in places 
to stand on the uphill side of the trees and pick fruit 
from their highest branches. 

Here and there the valley was invaded by a big hill 
that the road was obliged to climb directly over, and 
on the crests of these hills the highway in some instances 
crept along the verge of a bluff with the river directly 
below. Then I could overlook the irregular valley in 
either direction and see the patchwork of farmlands 



West Virginia Rambles 321 

where the corn and wheat and grass crops were growing, 
and where the sleek cattle were grazing in the generous 
pastures. 

It was early in June, and the farmers were harvesting 
their first crop of alfalfa. "That air alfalfa is fine 
stuff," one man said to me. "We get three and four 
crops a year." 

He was in his barnyard, which adjoined the road 
with the barn and a medley of sheds. That was a 
usual arrangement of the farm premises. They pre- 
sented their most unsavory aspect to the passer on the 
highway, and the house was in the background pleas- 
antly environed in foliage. Several of the farm house- 
hold were giving a horse an antidote for the distemper. 
They had a little bellows smoke-making apparatus, and 
used portions of a big hornet's nest for fuel. The smoke 
was blown up the nostrils of the horse, who submitted 
more amiably than one would expect, though with 
evident disgust. She was a very pretty, light-footed 
creature, and the farmer said: "She's a saddler from 
way back — never was hooked up, never has had a 
harness on. If you'll look over that-a-way you'll see a 
horse in the pasture. He's a driving horse and ain't 
any good to ride. He trots so solid you can't hardly 
sit on him. It's seldom a horse is good for harness and 
saddle both." 

Horseback riding was a common mode of locomotion 
throughout the region. So it is in all parts of the rural 
South, probably because of the scattered population 



322 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

and poor roads. The road I was travelling dipped into 
a hollow just beyond the barnyard where I had stopped, 
and the strewing of stones in this hollow showed that a 
torrent of considerable size coursed down it after heavy 
rains. My farm acquaintance said that occasionally 
the stream swelled to such proportions that it could 
not be forded, and he called my attention to the 
"watering-gates" in the fence on either side. These 
gates were sections of fencing made fast at the top so 
that the rising water would swing them upward, and 
they would not dam back the water, catch rubbish, or 
be carried away. When the water receded they would 
fall back to their original position. 

As I was about to start to go on, the farmer said, 
"What is your name, if I may ask?" 

I told him, and he remarked: "I'm a Pancake. 
Funny name, ain't it? We're all Pancakes along this 
valley for ten miles or more. Over the mountain to 
the west they're all Parkers for about the same dis- 
tance." 

"How can I get over there?" I inquired. 

"The best way from where you are at now," he said, 
"is to keep on along the road to the next big pasture. 
You go across that and the cornfield beyond, and in the 
farthest corner of the cornfield you'll find a path that 
will take you through the trees on the river bank to a 
footbridge. Right on the other side of the river is a 
road that goes over the mountain." 

I decided to visit the land of the Parkers and was 



i^JKf ' to 




.•/ /og house on the mountain 



West Virginia Rambles 323 

presently crossing the pasture and cornfield, avoiding 
as well as I could the muddy spots and the tangles along 
the fences where poison ivy lurked. When I reached 
the river the bridge proved to be a suspension affair 
made of wires with a slatted footway. It served chiefly 
to give the farmer owner access to such of his fields as 
were on the opposite side of the stream from his resi- 
dence. Beneath my footsteps the bridge teetered and 
wobbled and creaked rather alarmingly, and I was 
thankful when the passage had been safely made. On 
the bank was a lonely farmhouse and a small store. A 
man was just coming out of the door of the latter with 
a plug of tobacco he had bought, and I asked him for 
directions. After he had got a quid in his mouth and 
spit once or twice he pointed to a gate and told me to 
go through that. 

Appearances suggested that the road did not lead 
anywhere except to some woodlot, but I went through 
the heavy gate past a group of mildly curious cows and 
on up the steep hill and through another gate into the 
woods. The road, with many a twist and turn, fol- 
lowed up a ravine that partially cleft the mountain 
barrier. At one place another road parted from it, and 
there, just aside from the wheel tracks, stood a little 
white schoolhouse. Roundabout rose the green-walled 
forest, and the woodland birds sang, and a light breeze 
whispered in the upper foliage of the trees, but I could 
hear no human sound nor see the least indication that 
any habitations were near. The door was locked, and 



324 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

the building vacant, for it was vacation time. I looked 
in at a window and observed the rude, unpainted box 
desks. Conspicuous on the walls hung two mottoes — 
"Never be Idle" and "God Sees Me." 

I resumed my upward climb and at last reached the 
summit of the mountain where I found fencing and 
another ponderous gate. Soon there began to be clear- 
ings and farmhouses at intervals along the slender 
descending highway. I stopped at one of these dwell- 
ings. It was of logs and was typically Southern, with 
whitewashed walls, a porch extending across the front, 
and a great chimney built up against one end. The 
adjacent road was hemmed in by zigzag rail fences, but 
there was no gate or barway to give entrance to the 
yard, and every one came and went over a low place 
where two or three of the top rails had been taken off. 
A request for a drink of water served as an introduction, 
and then I sat down on the porch, and the family gath- 
ered there to visit with me. Through the open house- 
door I could see a fireplace filled with laurel, and a 
ceiling of whitewashed floor boards and supporting 
crosspieces that was so low the farmer had to stoop as 
he walked through the room. He had to stoop still 
more to come out of the door. 

"The best time to see this country," he said, "is 
when the peaches are ripe. They raise some of the 
nicest peaches here you ever laid your eyes on. We've 
got a small orchard on this place — about a thousand 
trees. That's only a garden patch compared with the 



West Virginia Rambles 325 

hundreds of acres some have. It'll give you a notion 
of the scale they work on here when I tell you that this 
spring I saw seven four-horse wagon loads of trees 
goin' to a single orchard to be planted. There's a lot 
of work in the business, but most of the year five men 
can take care of a hundred-acre orchard, but thirty or 
forty men are needed to pick and pack the fruit. 
Peaches run four months or more here. I've seen lots 
of 'em ripe by the Fourth of July, and we can keep the 
last ones up to Christmas by wrapping 'em. One thing 
I don't like is that we have to pick 'em before they're 
good and ripe in order to get 'em to market. You 
could n't handle 'em to ship 'em on the railroad if you 
let 'em get ripe. It looks curious to see the orchards all 
up on the mountains. The land in the valleys is just 
as good for 'em, but the tree would run too much risk 
of freezing. The cold settles in the hollows. You go 
through a low place on a cool, still night, and the frost 
will pinch your nose, but you'll feel the air grow warmer 
as soon as you strike a rising grade." 

"If you'd come along this morning," the housewife 
said, "I could have shown you a wild turkey. It was a 
young one that Will caught right in the middle of the 
field where he was ploughing potatoes. He heard the 
old bird call tereckly in the woods close by, and it must 
have had a nest there. Will brought the small one 
home, but the poor little thing was so scarey it could n't 
eat. If you took it up in your hands it would blow like 
a snake, and jus' as soon as you let it go it would creep 



326 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

around wild-like and get into some hole. Toward noon 
it died, and the boys buried it. Turkeys are pretty 
delicate things, I tell you — even the tame ones. If a 
little wild turkey grows up with our tame flock it gets 
very wild in the fall, and when it eats it'll never give 
mo' than three or four picks without putting up its 
head and lookin' in every direction." 

"I killed a wild turkey last Thanksgiving Day," 
Will said, "and I got another the day before Christmas. 
They're darker than tame turkeys and their feathers 
don't have quite the same markings. They can make 
a good strong flight, but it ain't easy for 'em to rise 
out of the hollers. They need to start on an elevation. 
The large males weigh anywhere from twelve to twenty- 
five pounds. We used to could ship them to the cities 
and get a fancy price, but that's against the law now. 

"I take my gun along when I'm goin' out to chop in 
the woods or when I go of a morning to shuck corn in a 
field surrounded by heavy timber. The turkeys come 
into the cornfield to eat. I go quiet, and they're hungry 
and so don't notice me as quick as usual. Sometimes 
I scatter a trail of corn and hide in the brush by a rail 
fence. That gives a feller a chance to get mo' than one. 
I've seen as high as forty in a single drove. Since the 
game laws have been made strict they're gettin' mo' 
plenty. They stay in the mountain all winter, and feed 
in the grainfields, and at the cornstacks, and they eat 
sumac seeds and dogwood berries and wild grapes. We 
often hear them gobbling in the spring. Once in a while 



West Virginia Rambles 327 

a man will take one of the wing bones and go out in the 
woods near some high place, and put the bone in his 
mouth and imitate the gobbling. That'll bring the 
turkeys near enough for him to get a shot." 

"I had an adventure the other day," the housewife 
said. "Will had borrowed a lantern of a neighbor when 
he was out one dark evening, and I was going along a 
woodroad taking the lantern home. I was thinkin' of 
snakes. The children's grandmother has always 
warned 'em to carry a knife to defend themselves with 
if a snake tried to wrap around 'em, and she'd tell 'em 
an awful story about a woman that was crushed to 
death by a snake. I decided that if a snake coiled 
round me I'd take a rock and use it to cut off the 
snake's head. 

"Jus' then something dashed up into my sunbonnet 
with a great flutter and tried to pick my face. Until I 
could get my eyes clear I thought it was a snake, and I 
struck at it with the lantern. It did n't fight me very 
long, and as soon as it quit I saw it was a pheasant, or 
what you people up North call a partridge. Right beside 
the road were as many as fifteen of its young ones, but 
they all scattered and hid under leaves, and in a few 
moments I could n't see a one of 'em. The old bird ran 
away with its feathers all standing out as if it was some 
furry animal, and it was cryin' so pitiful I was sorry 
for it. 'You need n't be afraid, little bird,' I said. 'I 
won't hurt you;' and I went on about my business." 

"Grandma and Aunt Jane won't either of 'em travel 



328 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

up this holler alone," the man said. "They're afraid 
of snakes, bears, mountain lions, and I don't know 
what. So they always go in pairs." 

"Well, they do say there are wildcats around here," 
his wife remarked. 

"Yes," Will agreed, "there's some few, but not 
many. Our next neighbor up above told me that the 
first day this season when he took his cattle through 
the gap to the mountain pasture they were frightened 
and ran up into the woods, and he heard a wildcat 
scream. It's a shrill, unpleasant sound that makes a 
feller feel bad when he's out in a lonely place." 

On a shed in the yard was a coonskin stretched dry- 
ing. "The boys and I got that coon one night last 
week," Will said. "We'd been to the creek giggin', and 
was comin' home along a run — that's the name we 
give to a small stream what you can step or jump over 
— when the dog got after a coon. They had n't run far 
before the coon went up a sycamore tree, and I climbed 
up after it. The tree was full of seed fuzz, and when I got 
to shaking it back and forth I could only cough and 
sneeze. But I dislodged the coon, and by the time I 
climbed down, the dog had killed it. I'm goin' to take 
the hide to the tannery and have it made into gloves." 

The company on the piazza included a young woman 
relative of the family whose home was in town. "I 
went giggin' with 'em that night," she said. "Will had 
on these here gum shoes to keep from slippin', but 
the boys was barefoot. The water was cold, and yet 



West Virginia Rambles 329 

Will went out cle'r up to his middle. The gig was a 
pole with a four-barbed prong on the end. We had a 
lantern, and we had a great big wire basket full of 
blazing pieces of fat pine. The basket was fastened to 
a pole that Will held out in front of him in his left hand 
with the help of a strap from his shoulder, and he would 
gig with his right hand. The fire made such a bright 
light he could see the fish a-layin' restin' right at the 
bottom of the crick. I took the fish off the gig, and I 
was jus' crazy to gig a snake I found, but they would n't 
let me run the gig into it, for fear it was poison and the 
gig might afterward poison the fish so we would n't 
dare eat 'em. We got sunfish and bass and suckers — 
thirty-four in all — and the largest ones weighed as much 
as two pounds. Besides, we gigged three eels and ten 
frogs. You know frog legs are quite a delicacy. They 
certainly were fine. Yes, and we ate our coon, too. 
You betcher we did. I'm a great lover of wild meat. 
Why, I like ground hog. You first boil 'em till they're 
tender, then roll 'em in flour and fry 'em in butter, and 
they're as nice meat as you could ask." 

"Not for the one that cooks 'em," the housewife 
said. "They're the fattest things I've ever seen, and 
when you get the smell of 'em while they're cooking 
that's all you want. One whiff is enough for me." 

"You must have cooked an old one," the other 
woman retorted, "and naturally that was strong and 
didn't eat very good." 

"We have cold winters here in the mountains," the 



330 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

farmer observed. "But I knowed a man whose home 
was within two miles of here who told me he never wore 
shoes till he was ten years old. He'd run out barefoot 
in the snow, and yet he was always hearty and lived 
to a ripe old age. He was a regular old-time man. It 
was his way to be very stingy and close, and he got to 
be worth right smart of money, for he never spent any 
foolishly. He was in a constant worry about the affairs 
of other people, and when a young couple married and 
their families thought they was makin' a fine match 
he'd shake his head and say, 'Time'll tell.' If the mar- 
riage was among the poor mountain people he'd say, 
'I wonder where they'll squat at.' 

"He was fretting as to how this one and that one 
would get along, and was always foreseeing difficulties. 
Really, those he pitied got more out of life than he did, 
and so it is generally. The poor are the happiest people 
we have. There's lots of 'em up in the mountains who 
don't know what they'll have to eat from one day to 
another, and at the same time they are enjoyin' them- 
selves. 

"The old man I was speakin' of used tobacker. He'd 
take some and chew it a while and then put it in a box 
to keep it for further use. He'd chew it again and 
again, adding a little nip of unchewed to freshen it up 
now and then, and he would n't throw it away till it 
was white." 

"He sure got all the good out of it," the housewife 
commented, "or all the bad." 







' : *'-*** •■-•* ; -- Set* *- r* «"- 

Worm fences 



West Virginia Rambles 331 

"As long as he lived he economized in just such ways 
as that," the man continued; "and he left a fortune to 
his nephew who's spending it jus' as fast as the old 
gentleman saved it, and maybe faster. The nephew 
don't chew his tobacker more'n once. His uncle was 
a bright old feller to talk with and a fine man to work 
for; and though he was close in a deal he was straight 
up and down in business and perfectly honest. 

"He never married, but there was a lady that he 
courted, and three different times they set the day for 
the wedding, and each time he made some excuse for 
delaying the ceremony. All his life he was attentive 
to her, and he was doubly so if any one else came around 
with an appearance of wanting her. Well, you can't 
see the heart, and I don't know whether she suffered 
or not. She always thought he would remember her 
in his will, but he did n't." 

"Those two boys have got to pick some strawberries," 
the housewife said, indicating a couple of youngsters 
who were playing with the dog in the yard. "I sent them 
a while ago to pick four baskets that I've promised to 
a neighbor, but they did n't fill the baskets good and 
full." 

I said I would go with them, and the man went along, 
too. We went through a gate into a pasture, and on 
the far side of the pasture passed through a second gate 
into a field, and a little farther on we climbed a high 
fence and were in the strawberry patch. This was on 
such a marvellously steep slope that the grip of the 



332 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

plants' hold on the earth seemed decidedly precarious, 
and you could fancy that a picker in an unguarded 
moment might lose his balance and roll down and get 
a new pattern on his clothing. The man said he had to 
work the land with a mule, and I could readily under- 
stand that a horse would not be sure-footed enough for 
so steep a slant. 

"I've got much better soil than this for berries," 
the man remarked, "but on rich ground the weeds whip 
you out." 

He called my attention to a heap of brush just over 
the fence. "I killed a rattlesnake in there last year," 
said he. "I was digging sprouts and disturbed him, 
and the first thing I knew I heard the old feller rattle, 
and I smelt his poison. Then I tore the brush heap to 
pieces, and suddenly he made a dive for me. But 
luckily he did n't get me, and I killed him with my 
hoe. He had nine rattles and was fully six feet long. 
I saved the hide. Ladies like to have belts made out 
of a snake-hide. The skin is very thin and has to be 
stretched on to leather, and after that buckles can be 
sewed on." 

It did not take us long to gather the few berries that 
were needed, and then we returned as we had come. 
But when we got to the highway I went on down the 
mountain until I had left the woodland behind and 
was in a fertile, well-tilled valley. Toward night I 
stopped at a farmhouse and engaged lodging. Behind 
the dwelling was a broad level of luscious fields. In 



West Virginia Rambles 333 

front was a little strip of steep pasturage and an abrupt 
wooded ridge. I sat down on the piazza where a 
ponderous elderly man was perusing a newspaper. He 
nodded to me and said: "The weather's quite cool for 
this time of year. We had a frost last night, but it's 
in the dark of the moon, and so our crops wa'n't hurt." 

Just then a small boy came running around the 
corner of the house. Another boy, uttering cries of 
wrath, followed in hot pursuit. It seemed that the 
former was running away with the latter's hat; but 
my companion brought the chase to a close by crying 
out in a voice that had a thunderous rumble in it: 
"Give your brother his hat. I'm goin' to git a holt of 
you, sir, unless you do." 

Presently a younger man joined us. His hobby 
appeared to be automobiles. The highway was much 
frequented by them, and he commented on every one 
that passed — told what make it was and its faults and 
virtues. "The fact is, I don't like farmin'," he ex- 
plained, "and I've got a little repair shop and do con- 
siderable work tinkerin' mobubbles in it. They're 
always gettin' out of whack, you know, and their 
owners often only have gumption enough to start and 
stop 'em and keep 'em in the road. There's another 
one passing. What a racket it makes! — reminds me of 
a manure-spreader. I'll show you my shop if you care 
to see it." 

So I visited the shop and saw its varied tools and 
mechanical devices. In an adjacent shed the young 



334 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

man was making an automobile out of an old gasoline 
engine combined with parts of a sewing machine and 
mowing machine and other worn-out farm machines. 
There were ingenious contrivances also whereby the 
engine could be made to run a churn, a band saw, a 
corn sheller, and a grindstone. 

"I've monkeyed with a little bit of everything," the 
young man remarked when we returned to the piazza. 
"Lately I've been thinkin' I'd try raising ginseng. It 
grows wild in the mountains. I found quite a patch of 
it once up in a hollow on our land, and I was intending 
to dig it after a while. But we had a couple of men 
cutting pulp wood, and they run into it and dug it up 
on our time. They got eighteen pounds of dry roots 
that they sold for something like six or seven dollars a 
pound. We did n't know what they'd done till several 
months later. I could have shipped it myself and got 
twenty dollars a pound. It's a rich lookin' plant, as 
you see it in the woods, with dark green leaves. There's 
nothin' else like it. I can tell a bunch of that amongst 
a thousand other plants. The mountaineers trail these 
mountains all through and hunt wild animals and dig 
out ginseng. They begin digging along about May or 
June, and keep on up to the time that the frost bites it. 
What they get is all shipped to China, where the people 
have a superstitious idea that it is a good medicine. 
There's lots of herbs growing in our mountains that are 
of some use, such as lady slipper and coon root and May 
apple — I've e't a many of them apples — rattleweed, 



West Virginia Rambles 335 

elecampane, peppermint, calamus — they make a tea 
out of calamus which they claim is good for the colic — 
sassafras, wild hyssop, and sarsaparilla — that there is 
a blood-cleanser. 

"You'd be surprised how ignorant the mountaineers 
are. They say 'fernent' for opposite, and 'outen' for 
out, and all that sort of brogue. The children grow up 
just as ignorant as their parents. They have enough 
natural ability and are good workers, and have reasona- 
ble horse sense, but they get no schooling and are 
heedless and dull. I knew an old feller who had eighteen 
children, and he said he did n't want none of 'em to 
learn to read or write. 'I did n't have any education,' 
he said, ' and there ain't a blame bit of use in it. There's 
too much readin' goin' on, and that's what makes so 
many rascals and thieves.' 

"He entertained himself chiefly by chewin' tobacker 
and cursin'. He's dead now, and the devil's keepin' 
him company maybe. 

"There's an old woman of that class of people who's 
livin' on a side road not a mile away. She talks like a 
lion a-roarin' and looks vicious. It would n't take her 
long to tell you that you were an infernal fool, and yet 
she don't know A from a haystack. Her parents were 
first cousins, and there was something the matter with 
all their five children. Every one of 'em had a room to 
rent in the upper story. But this woman has a son 
who's all right. He's sharp as a tack. That fellow has 
always got an answer for you." 



336 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

In the pasture across the road milking had begun, 
and I went to watch the process from near at hand. 
The milkers included the household grandmother, a 
recently adopted orphan girl, and the hired man. 
Grandma spent much of her time giving directions to 
the orphan, who was making her first attempt. "When 
I was ten years old," Grandma said to her, "I could 
milk as well as I can now, and you're thirteen." 

"But this cow won't give down her milk," the orphan 
complained. 

"Talk about not givin' down her milk!" Grandma 
scoffed, "why, her bag is just full of it." 

Then, after some detailed advice, she said: "There, 
you make it rattle in the bucket now. Oh, you're 
milkin' a heap better than when you started." 

After they finished their task Grandma looked into 
the orphan's small tin pail, and said: "Well, you've 
filled your bucket, anyway, and you've got about as 
much more on your clothes. They're wringin' wet." 

By and by we had supper, and later the young farmer 
and I stood and chatted in the yard, while the hired man 
sat on the woodpile. This hired man was deaf and 
dumb. "He's got some education at an institution," 
said the farmer, "and I've learned the sign language so 
I can talk with him. He's a pretty good worker, but 
he wants things to go his way, and his way is a mighty 
poor one. I'm 'bout the only person who can manage 
him. If I send him off by himself to work he's very apt 
to stand and talk — that is, go through the sign motions 



West Virginia Rambles 337 

with his hands. But I suppose he has rather a lone- 
some time of it. I had him go along with me to a 
cattle-show last week, where, among other things, they 
exhibited a six-legged calf. That calf interested him 
very much. It tuck his mind off his self. You would n't 
think it, but he's got a right smart of money saved up. 
He never spends a cent if he can help it, and if it was 
left to him, his clothes would hang in shreds before he'd 
buy new ones. Well, let's go in." 

He led the way to the parlor where he lit a lamp and 
handed me a piece of sheet music to look at. "It's 
something I composed," he said. "There was a small 
charge for getting it published, but it's priced at fifty 
cents, and the publishers sent me two hundred copies. 
Perhaps you'd like to hear a little music." 

He produced a guitar and tuned it, put around his 
neck a wire so bent as to hold a "mouth-harp" before 
his face, and then played me various tunes grave and 
gay, meanwhile thumping the time with his foot. He 
wore his grimy working clothes, and retained on his 
head a misshapen old straw hat. The music brought 
the children into the room, and the gentle, sedate little 
orphan girl seated herself bolt upright in a chair and 
listened with fascinated attention. But now and then 
she cast anxious glances at the boys and cautioned them 
with mild ineffectiveness to be quiet. They had lain 
down on the sofa and snugged up together giggling 
and squirming. 

At length their father turned on them and exclaimed: 



West Virginia Rambles 339 

He gave me a few sample melodies on the cornet, and 
then took up a whistle that belonged to the boys and 
showed how it could be made to sound like a fife or 
like a flute. As a final climax to his musical exhibition 
he played the mouth-harp with his nose. 

"Here's a newspaper, if you'd care to read it," he 
said at length, handing me a copy that he picked up 
from the table. "The papers are full of politics now, 
and most of the men around spend a lot of time gabbin' 
and gassin' over the rights and wrongs of things. They 
don't know what they're talkin' about, and I'm tired 
of the whole dog-gone business. My daddy's a demo- 
crat, but I vote for any man I please. Did you ever 
see this book?" 

He brought one from a meagre collection of preten- 
tious subscription books and cheap novels that occupied 
two or three shelves of a cabinet. It was an anti-negro 
volume that proved by various Bible texts that the 
colored people are by nature allied to the beasts and 
therefore should be the white man's servants. He was 
telling me how invincible the argument of the book was 
when we heard wheels in the yard. His wife had ar- 
rived, and he went to take care of the horse. After- 
ward he piloted me to my room, a small apartment in 
which there were two beds. One of the beds was 
occupied by the hired man, who snored with stentorian 
vigor, and it was quite a while before I could accustom 
myself to that sort of a lullaby and fall asleep. 

The hired man got up at daylight and went forth to 



34-0 Highways and Byways — St. Lawrence to Virginia 

start work. When I rose an hour or two later and went 
outdoors the western side of the valley was illumined 
by the clear summer sunshine, but the eastern side, 
where the house stood, was still in the chill shadow of 
the wooded ridge. The chickens were peeping hungrily, 
the turkeys were picking about the yard looking for 
stray morsels, and the dogs were curled up near the 
back door. 

We presently had breakfast, and after that work 
began in earnest, and I once more betook myself to 
the highway. 

Notes. — The state is notable for its very great resources in coal, 
oil, and gas. Wheeling, the largest city, is an important trading and 
manufacturing center. On the borders of the city, at the crest of 
Fulton Hill, is what is known as McCulloch's Leap. McCulloch 
was a celebrated Indian fighter, who here escaped pursuing savages 
by going over the precipice, a hundred and fifty feet high. Pitts- 
burg, sixty-two miles distant, is connected with Wheeling by a hilly, 
winding dirt road that is fairly good most of the way. 

The most important motor route in the southern part of the state 
passes through Charleston, the capital. To the east it passes over 
the mountains to Virginia Hot Springs and to the west it goes to 
Ohio. 

For more about West Virginia see "Highways and Byways of the 
South." 



THE following pages contain advertisements of 
Macmillan books by the same author and on 
kindred subjects. 



The Touring Edition of 

CLIFTON JOHNSON'S 

BEAUTIFUL BOOKS 

From the Highways and Byways Series 

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Illustrated with Photographs by the Author 



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MOUNTAINS 

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THE BOOK OF THE GREAT NORTH 
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SKETCHES IN THE GULF OF ST. LAWRENCE 

By JOHN MASON CLARKE 

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New Books of Travel, Adventure and Description 



My Life with the Eskimos 

By VILHJALMUR STEFANSSON 

Illustrated with half-tone reproductions of photographs taken by the author 
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A fascinating book of description and adventure has been 
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The Barbary Coast 

By ALBERT EDWARDS 

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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

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SEP 25 1913 




LBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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